


Requiem

by glasslogic



Series: Fortress [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demon!Dean, M/M, Violence, arguable dub-con, bad language, blood-play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-11 13:53:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2070777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasslogic/pseuds/glasslogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a price to be paid for everything, and the time has come for Dean to uphold his end of the bargain that freed him from Hell, but the voices in Sam's head have fallen silent and without them the path forward remains obscure. They've fought demons, angels, and each other, but it's the frustration of fruitless months on the road that may be the hardest obstacle they've had to overcome. When exhaustive work finally turns up a clue, it leads straight to the one place on Earth Sam swore he'd never set foot again. But the promises Dean made were different, and Sam's going with him, whether he likes it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

** Chapter One **

Strange days have found us  
Strange days have tracked us down  
They're going to destroy  
Our casual joys  
We shall go on playing  
Or find a new town  
                                    ~Strange Days, The Doors

It was frustrating, Sam mused, to have the best he could do never be quite good enough. Missouri had certainly demonstrated it for him enough times, but whenever he tried to reach into the hazy depths of his own aura, he could never seem to touch the things he was reaching for. They drifted away, vanishing on unseen currents, disturbed by his attempts to grasp hold of them. It was seriously impeding his ability to make any kind of progress at finally getting some control over his alleged psychic _gifts_.

Sam opened his eyes and stared moodily out into the lush greenery of Kansas springtime. The air was heavy with the richness of fresh mown grass and the wisteria that wound its way over the wooden rail of the back porch on its way up to the roofline. Delicate purple flowers clustered like grapes, reminding Sam that he really should have eaten something between doing five hours of yard work and settling in to wrestle with his uncooperative mind.

There was an odd feeling to the day that was completely separate from his utter failure to make any sort of headway, like standing blindfolded at the edge of a cliff, all rushing air and unreliable footing. The feeling wasn't new, but some days it was stronger than others. And he was tired. He couldn't help but think that things would just be _easier_ if he wasn't so damn tired all the time. Sam had thought that taking some time off the road and getting a full eight hours in the same bed for a few weeks would set things back on track, but it was hard to pay back a lifetime's worth of sleep debt.

It had been a little over a year since they'd cleaned up the most recent mess with the demons. Banished. All of them. All the ones of power and consequence, at least. One hundred years of open space to work in. Or one hundred years for Dean to work with -- Sam expected to be gone long before that.

Inside the house, Missouri slammed something in the kitchen, and he could hear the loud jangle of silverware being roughly handled. Despite the rumbling growl of his empty stomach, Sam decided that missing a meal was preferable to volunteering as a target for the sharp side of Missouri's tongue. She'd been in an increasingly bad temper for the last week, and had made it abundantly clear that if she wanted to talk to him about it, she'd let him know. So for now it was the worn paint of the back porch, hummingbirds, slow, fuzzy bees, and just enough of a breeze to keep the humidity from being oppressive. Sam was definitely old and battered by the world enough to appreciate the idyllic nature of the day, and the traitorous impulse to blow off a few hours and just enjoy it had occurred to him more than once. But he had been visiting with Missouri long enough that other kinds of needs were also starting to stir lazily to his attention, and they would be less easy to ignore. Better to work while he could. Lounging around soaking up the peaceful ambiance of an easy afternoon just for enjoyment's sake would have to wait for another lifetime.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sank back into his center.

Or the closest reasonable approximation he was capable of.

The insistent blare of a car horn close by cut through the quiet of the neighborhood, dragging Sam sharply back to awareness from the deep meditation he'd been struggling to maintain for... He glanced at the all-weather clock where it hung protected up under the porch overhang and swore. Twenty minutes. Shit.

He groaned and uncrossed his legs, stretching them out on the sun-warmed wooden slats of Missouri's porch. It hadn't just been the noise that had pulled him back; there had been something ominously familiar about it….

It took Sam a second to place it because he was hoping so earnestly that he was wrong.

"Sam! Get out here!" Dean's voice was probably clearly audible for at least half a block in any direction. Sam winced as another horn blast echoed through the neighborhood. He got up hastily, wanting to head off any further disturbance before--

The back door banged open and Missouri stood there, flour on her apron and fire in her eyes. "Do you hear that damn demon out on the street disturbing this entire neighborhood?" she barked, waving a wooden spoon practically under his nose. "We had an understanding about him, Sam. You can stay at my house, and he can stay somewhere else. A very far else. You want to tell me what he's doing out there, making enemies of all my neighbors and--"

"Sam!" Another blast of the horn punctuated the impatient summons and cut her off.

Missouri's eyes narrowed to slits. 

"I'll get rid of him," Sam promised, edging back towards the porch steps.

"You do that." She started to say something else, then an emotion other than irritation surfaced in her eyes. It was gone before Sam could decipher it, but his earlier sense of unease was refreshed in its wake. "Or… just shut him up for a few minutes and then come back inside. I want to talk to you about something."

That sounded ominous. The uneasy feeling grew worse. Missouri was hardly reticent about speaking her mind, and anything she thought she needed a lead-in for was unlikely to be good news.

"Missouri--" Sam started, vastly preferring just to get the cards laid out instead of letting his imagination try to fill in the blanks. After the last few years, it was getting very creative when coming up with new problems to complicate his life.

The horn blasted again, interrupting him before he could press further. Seeing Missouri's eyes narrow even more, Sam dropped the conversation in favor of a strategic retreat. He backed down the steps, jogging around the side of the house and through the side gate before Dean could find something even more disruptive to do to get his attention.

The Impala was pulled up against the curb, the glossy black shine of her immaculate paint giving her the air of a portent of doom against the manicured lawns and pale suburban colors of the neighborhood. Considering who was driving, Sam decided that wasn't entirely out of left field.

"Are you wearing shorts?" Dean greeted him over the low rumble of the Impala's engine when Sam drew close.

"They're sweatpants."

"I can see your knees."

"So they're short sweatpants, I cut them off," Sam said, piqued. "I wasn't expecting to be out for a public critique, Dean. Did you drive over here just to interrogate me about my wardrobe?"

"It wasn't out of my way."

"Dean…" Sam sighed.

Dean shrugged. "I'm bored."

Irritation flickered across Sam's face, even though he'd been half expecting this kind of interruption for the better part of a week. "I don't know what you want me to do about it. I'm busy, and you're not supposed to be here. Go be bored someplace less likely to get me evicted. You're… disrupting things."

Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And what exactly am I disrupting, Sam? Your deep communing with the birds and bees on the back porch? It's been three weeks since you said you just wanted to _swing by_ for a visit. I've been _more_ than patient. Get in the car and let's go already."

Sam crossed his arms, making less of an effort to keep his tone neutral. "And go _where_ exactly, Dean? More aimless wandering around the middle of the country? Maybe take in a national park or two? Does that strike you as a real productive use of our time?"

"It'd be as productive as whatever the hell you're doing camped in Missouri's guest room while I twiddle my thumbs across town," Dean said, derision dripping from his voice. "There's only so much television a guy can watch, you know? I'd find something more personally entertaining to do, but I don't want to listen to you whine for the next thousand miles either."

Knowing the kinds of things Dean found "personally entertaining", Sam was suddenly grateful he'd decided to drop by and disrupt his day instead. "I thought you were stomping out gremlins on the other side of the county?"

"I stomp pretty hard, Sam. That was distracting for like two days."

"I'm learning things here, Dean. Useful things. More useful than the absolute _nothing_ we've come up with on our own. I need some more time."

"Like what?"

Sam frowned. "What do you mean 'like what'?"

"You know," Dean waved a hand encouragingly, "all this 'usefulness' you're picking up. Give me an example."

"It's not like that. I can't just rattle you off some _list_ . I'm learning… control," Sam struggled to describe what he was trying to accomplish. "Like how to see the way things work in my mind, how to… you know, _do_ things, Dean. Things aren't as simple as we used to think it was, and it's not like just pouring some water out of a glass or learning how to fix an engine or anything else with concrete progress. This takes time, it takes focus, and it _doesn't_ take having to worry about what you're up to when you're out of my sight!"

Dean turned the engine off and slouched back in his seat, tossing the keys onto the dash like he planned to be there awhile. "Gee, Sam. If only there was some way we could be in contact when we're not in shouting distance. Like some kind of… I don't know, _psychic bond_ or something. Wouldn't that be awesome? You wouldn't have to worry, _I_ wouldn't have to worry--"

Sam shot Dean an extremely unimpressed look. "We're doing fine the way we are. We lived most of our lives in our own heads, I think we can manage to do it again for awhile."

"You're right, Sam," Dean said with exaggerated patience. "We _did_ live most of our lives in our own heads -- and then whacky hijinks happened. I was ripped apart by hellhounds, and you screwed Ruby, the demon who hung me out for slaughter, right into a prison of your own design. How well did we do again?"

"The bond isn't _severed_ , Dean. It's just..."

"Barricaded into utter uselessness?"

"I can still feel you," Sam said with a deliberate patience he didn't feel, "we're just not bleeding all over each other anymore."

"Yeah, I can tell you're alive. Usually. Hooray."

"Is _this_ what you came over to irritate me about?" Sam demanded. "We've had this conversation. I've told you, I can't _think_ when you're always right _there_ , Dean. You said you were okay with this."

"That was when I thought you'd see reason after a week and let me take some of these freaking walls back down. Not ask me to keep adding them until I'm picking up more from passing cars than from the guy in the seat next to me!"

Sam rolled his eyes. "How about you go find some more gremlins and leave me alone for a few more days?"

Dean snorted his opinion of that. "How about you go get your bag and get in the car? We'll get you some shrooms or whatever the hell the kids are smoking these days, and you can expand your mind the traditional way. It'd probably be just as useful."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "How about _you_ go--" But whatever Sam was about to suggest Dean do was cut short by the squeak of Missouri's front screen door. He glanced back at her unhappy face, then cast Dean a frustrated look. "Just… stay here, and try not to annoy anyone. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"She's going to say the same thing I did. It's time to go, Sam."

"No, she isn't," Sam said, irritated. "She knows what I'm trying to do, and that I need to be _here_ to do it. Where it's peaceful, and quiet, and I'm not getting constantly interrupted by whatever petty crisis we've tripped over on the road."

Dean shrugged and grabbed a magazine from the seat beside him.

The blast of the horn just as he turned towards the house made Sam flinch and spin back to glare at his brother. Dean gave him a supremely innocent look and waved the magazine he'd been resting on the steering column. "Accident."

  
~~~~~

 

 "I think it's time for you to go."

 Sam almost choked on his mouthful of sandwich. He had known the conversation was going to be not great when Missouri had refrained from commenting on Dean's presence still darkening her doorstep, and then ushered Sam into the kitchen where she'd insisted he eat before they spoke. The sandwich was delicious, but it was still going to kill him if he couldn't clear his throat.

"Why?" he wheezed when he could breathe again. "Is it Dean? Because that's a problem I can solve. I can solve it right now if--"

"Dean out front isn't the problem, Dean in _town_ is. He disrupts things for miles around when he's in the area, Sam. Exiling him to some classy little hole in the wall that rents by the hour on the other side of the city isn't solving the problem."

"It's not by-the-hour, I talked him out of that one. It was cheaper to go by the week at the place across the--"

Missouri's glare cut him off.

"I can send him to go visit Bobby for awhile," Sam finished instead.

"And here I thought you liked Singer," she said dryly. "Haven't you two tortured that poor man enough for one year? Besides, Dean doesn't strike me as the type that 'sends' particularly easy. It's a miracle he's not been making daily drive-by's here, and you think he's going to go take himself off a few states away for awhile and leave you out of his sight?"

Put that way… "No," Sam sighed. "But I need your help. I've been working on this for _years_ , and I still feel like I'm fumbling with the _basics_. I need--"

"Years! Samuel Winchester, I should smack you right now. People work on this for _decades_ and don't make much more progress than you've done. If that. Now, some of us are lucky, we get picked up young and taught early, but that's not the usual way of things. You're doing fine."

"I can't even keep my own barriers in place! I build them like you taught me, and then they just seem to melt. I'm _still_ having to beg Dean to put up walls to keep himself out of my head. How is this _progress_?"

Missouri looked highly unimpressed. "Are these the barriers you're trying to build on that direct pipeline in your head between you and a literal power of chaos and entropy? And… you say they seem to melt? I know _I'm_ surprised." Her sarcasm was sharp enough to slice bread, but Sam was considering her words and didn't feel the sting.

"That…" Sam frowned. "You really think that's the problem?"

"I _really_ _think_ that you're doing the best you can with what you've got," she said firmly. "It's a lousy set of circumstances, and you got tossed in at the deep end. Between the curse and its complications, angels whispering in your head, _Dean_ , and everything else on your plate -- you've got a heck of a lot more to deal with than most people trying to learn the craft, and you're still making progress. It's slow, but it's steady."

"Too slow. There are things we have to do, that _I_ have to do, and I can't when I--"

"What things? Last I heard you and that brother of yours didn't have a clue what the next step was, you're just fishing around waiting for inspiration to strike. And if _that's_ what you're so worried about, well, you already know how to attract that kind of attention. It's just opening yourself to the possibility and waiting. Sometimes you have to wait longer than others."

"I haven't had a vision in months now. And it's not like they were all that helpful before either."

"Well I don't see anything wrong with your gift, other than," she shot another dark look towards the window where the Impala was still visible by the curb, "the usual. So maybe there's just nothing to know right now. You have to be patient, Sam."

"And cross my fingers and wish really hard?" Sam asked, voice heavy with resignation.

Missouri spread empty hands. "You go with what you've got."

Sam slumped back in his chair. "Wishing hasn't ever really worked out well for me, Missouri."

Missouri raised an eyebrow. "What about whining? Has whining worked out well for you?"

A smile flickered at the corners of Sam's mouth. "It used to work on Dean sometimes."

"Well, I knew it hadn't melted your daddy's heart," Missouri said tartly. "How convenient that Dean's waiting for you outside. Go away for a few months, work on it some more, and then come back and we'll take another look. But there's really nothing else I can do for you right now."

It was Sam's turn to raise an eyebrow. "You mind if I hang around long enough to pack my things before I leave?"

"I don't even mind if you finish your sandwich first," Missouri said generously. "In fact, I insist. I'll even cut you some pie."

  
~~~~~

 

"Here," Sam said, shoving a cellophane wrapped paper plate into Dean's hands through the open driver's side window. He reached past his brother to grab the keys off the dashboard and walked around to throw his bags in the trunk. By the time Sam slid into the passenger side Dean had his mouth full and his fingers sticky.

"Missouri made me pie?" Dean mumbled around a mouthful. Sam chalked his translation skills up to decades of exposure and grabbed a napkin from the glove compartment for him.

"Well, she _made_ pie. I didn't see a name attached. And she'd probably appreciate it if you ate it somewhere else." Dean wrapped the cellophane back over what was left and made a production of licking his fingers, then tossed a jaunty wave towards the house and turned the engine back on. The familiar rumble soaked through Sam's bones and he was immediately overwhelmed by the desire for a nap. Earlier he'd ignored the impulse in favor of working, but after being unceremoniously kicked out, he was momentarily feeling less dedicated. He closed his eyes and settled back into the seat, planning a long blissful afternoon of absolutely nothing.

"Seriously?" Dean asked as they pulled away from the curb and made their way towards the highway. "Three weeks apart, and the first thing you want to do is pass out? I thought you'd catch all up on your beauty rest while you were on vacation."

Sam didn't even bother opening his eyes. "I'm old."

"You keep saying that like it's some excuse note to kick your feet up in a recliner and bitch about the youth today. Should I get you an oxygen tank, grandpa?"

"Have you got one?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "You _aren't_ old. And even real old people don't sleep _twelve hours a day_ , Sam."

"Maybe they should. And it's not _twelve hours_."

"Maybe you need some more vitamins or something. It's probably all those plants you eat."

Sam sighed and opened his eyes reluctantly, since Dean obviously wasn't going to shut-up anytime soon and let him sleep. "I'm sure it is, if you mean actual sources of nutrition. Pork rinds and beer don't exactly constitute a balanced diet."

"I know, you have to balance them with burgers and fries. It's like some kind of pyramid, they showed it to us in school a few times."

Sam cast Dean a suspicious sideways glance, but Dean's attention was firmly on the road and his tone was rife with sincerity. Sam abandoned it as a lost cause.

"If I was sick, wouldn't our little thing take care of it?"

"'Our little thing?' We have a code word now for my screwing you into a mattress while you're soaking up my blood? Maybe we should name it. How about Brenda? Then we can talk about it in public."

"How about _no_ ," Sam turned his head to glare at Dean's profile. But as before, Dean's attention seemed exclusively on the asphalt in front of them.

"We'll see," Dean said noncommittally. "But seriously," he shrugged, "I have no idea. Have you even been sick since we got back together?"

Sam thought about that for a minute. "Not that comes to mind," he finally said. "I don't really feel _sick_ now, just… tired. And I can't believe it's some kind of vitamin problem, I still eat pretty much what I've been eating for years. Maybe I have mono."

That did raise Dean's eyebrow. "The kissing disease? Have you been kissing other guys, Sam?"

"There's other ways to get it."

"Other kissing related ways?"

"Other-- _no_." Sam rolled his eyes and peeled the saran wrap off a corner of the pie so he could pick at the crust. He'd been too busy being stunned in the house to really enjoy his own piece. "They just call it that. It's in saliva. Maybe someone sneezed on me."

"I thought you were pre-law, not pre-med. And stay out of my pie."

Sam ignored the order. "You get a lot of people living in close quarters and things get passed around. Mono, flu, meningitis. It's a big deal in the dorms."

"Usually when you hear about things being passed around at college, it's class notes or friendly co-eds. Now you're telling me it's really all about germ warfare? I think you're shattering some of my illusions here, Sam."

"That's because I went to a real college, Dean. Not one featured on a late night skin flick special."

"You mean the fine ladies of College Girls Gone Wild have been lying to me all these years? That's crushing," Dean said. "But I still I don't think you have mono."

"And this is based on your extensive medical experience, Dr. Winchester?"

"Nope," Dean said easily. "It's based on a solid couple of decades of being thoroughly screwed by the universe. And that's just in this world. Add up my years Below and… yeah. That's a big number." He glanced over at Sam. "I see that expression, and you can knock it off right now. I did the time, I can talk about it if I want to, and you can just pencil in your angsty guilt trip for later when I don't have to be here for it." When Sam said nothing, Dean nodded in satisfaction and continued. "Anyways, mono would be easy. Normal, something anyone can get. If you're actually sick, you would have something like space pox from the planet Xenon, and soon it will spread around the globe wiping out major cities and populations before mutating into some kind of gelatinous mass."

"Gelatinous mass?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "The space pox or the planet Xenon?"

"Both?" Dean offered.

Sam got tired of Dean's wounded sidelong looks and covered the pie again. He slumped back in his seat, licked his fingers clean, and laced them over his stomach. "So, between cleaning up the gremlin problem, and showing up at Missouri's, you pretty much just parked yourself in front of the television for three weeks."

"Some sci-fi channel was having a movie marathon. They had free microwave popcorn in the lobby."

"For three weeks."

"Well, I guess they had a ton of shitty movies to show, Sam. It was as productive as anything you were doing."

Sam ground his teeth but refused to rise to the bait.

 

** Chapter Two **

You know it just done slipped my mind  
My memories undefined  
You know it just done slipped my mind  
They must have spiked my wine  
My mind and body are still out of tune  
I hope they run into each other real soon  
                                      ~It Slipped My Mind, The Doors

"Wake up."

I'm awake," Sam mumbled.

"And I'm the homecoming queen. Move your ass, Sam."

Sam blinked in the late morning sunlight and tried to remember where they were. Ohio? Oklahoma? He was pretty sure it was one of the "O" ones. Or it had been when they'd left the motel that morning.

Two weeks since Dean had dragged him out of Kansas, and nothing of any note had changed. Every day brought new scenery and the same old grind. Not even really _new_ scenery; Sam was fairly confident that he could draw a comprehensive road-map of the continental United States from memory. It wasn't even a question if he could do the highways and interstates. A few too many beers and a bar bet had proven that, years ago.    

Two weeks out of Kansas, and one week since Dean had pressed him into the cheap mattress of another nameless motel and soothed the curse between them. If you could even call it a curse anymore. Sam hadn't offered even a knee-jerk, token resistance. He had struggled hard with himself, and occasionally with Dean too, to reach a place where he was okay with what happened between them on the nights when the curse drove them together.

Almost as okay were the nights when it didn't, and he ended up sweaty and pinned down under his brother's weight anyways. But when Dean reached for him and all he felt was a distant gratitude for something to do beyond another night of fruitless meditation and blind internet searches, well that was was… a little beyond what Sam was willing to accept about himself. It seemed like there should be some middle ground between hand-wringing angst and wherever he was now that he could seize and hold. Some platform of moral contemplation where he could be accepting of the reality of their situation without completely surrender his guilt and his frustrated anger over the double-edged choices life had dumped on him.

Though that was probably just residual resistance and an innate instinct to over-analyze things that Dean kept bitching about. It was certainly less mentally exhausting to just skip all the philosophical crap and simply make sure they kept lube on hand.

It was a strange affair they had. Dean claimed that he didn't feel the need for sex like he had when he'd been alive -- and Sam believed him. There was something almost pragmatic about Dean's approaches, a feeling more of ownership and dominance than real sexual desire, though sex was certainly the language Dean expressed those impulses in. And he expressed it fluently. He'd had the better part of two decades of practice when he was alive to draw on for inspiration, God alone knew _what_ he'd been up to in Hell, and then the last several years of exploring Sam on a regular basis. Even with the thick barricades blocking most of Dean's curse-brought ability to read Sam's moods and reactions, the result was frequently impressive.

Sometimes even before the bleeding started.

Sam wasn't nearly so adept with things on his end, but Dean seemed to appreciate his efforts anyway. Or at least appreciate that he was _making_ an effort. Sam had always been plenty expressive when they let the curse run long and Dean's blood was in the air, but whatever was between them now -- curse, bond, the ides of fate -- they had chosen to keep it intact, and to Sam that meant making something more comfortable of whatever was between them, even when he wasn't drunk on Dean's blood or so desperate he barely remembered how he got this bruise, or that one.... At least as comfortable as was possible between an Entropic demon and a directionless psychic, the fate of three Planes of existence resting squarely on their shoulders.

Between brothers. Whatever that meant to Dean now. Some days Sam was surer than others that he knew what was going on inside Dean's head.

Lately things had been rougher than usual, with Dean seeming to have reached new heights in his ability to be consistently irritating. Instead of contemplating his really questionable love life, Sam was spending more time contemplating how to keep Dean occupied on the road, doing something other than delivering an unbroken monologue of needling remarks and cutting observations. Before Sam gave in to the growing desire to punch him. Dean's retaliation would likely only result in one of two things; an extensive hospital stay, or time spent in even _closer_ company with Dean while his curse-bound-blood knit Sam's broken bones.

Dean wouldn't be even remotely sorry.

And it was hard to say there was anything even particularly new about the recent annoyances. Sam couldn't point to a single thing Dean was doing that _should_ have set his teeth on edge, but everything was just... grating, and was giving Sam a more or less permanent headache. Which might just be a predictable outcome of months and months of frustration. The aimless wandering wasn't new, but it was still maddening to be at it so long and still have no more clues than they'd had when Dean first showed back up and announced his grand plan. Freeing the Angels of Entropy from Hell _sounded_ all good and wonderful --except that it really didn't sound _that_ good or wonderful, but Sam had been assured repeatedly that it was a worthy goal-- but it was also the kind of thing that really needed to come with directions, and so far none had been forthcoming from any quarter.

Sam's new sleeping patterns weren't helping either. Nothing had noticeably changed in the days since they'd last bent to the curse's needs. Which might mean it wasn't an illness, or might mean nothing at all. It didn't bother Sam himself much -- he was just _tired,_ not bleeding out. His personal suspicion was boredom as much as anything. Wanting nine hours of sleep instead of his usual six didn't strike him as quite the crisis as Dean seemed to regard it. Humans were supposed to need eight, it made sense to Sam that humans who'd spent decades abusing their bodies might need a little more. Everything had a price that eventually caught up to you, and if he had to pay his with a few more hours of shut-eye instead of grinding joints and crippling pain, then... he was still coming out ahead.

Dean didn't seem to see it in quite the same light.

Sam stifled a yawn and looked around at a scrub desert that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Dean whistling while he pumped gas at a station that looked like it was already ancient before their father was born was the only sign of life on the landscape. Maybe before their grandfather even. It was hard to tell in the west sometimes, where it was almost always bone dry and arid. Things aged to a certain point, and then they just preserved, standing for years in the same state they might have been seen by an earlier generation.

The tiny store attached to the gas station was badly weathered, by probably decades of baking sun and battering wind. The ancient sign leaning against the building that had might have once read Conoco hadn't fared any better. Sam didn't see any sign of a clerk, and the only cars around were stripped heaps abandoned and half buried by blowing sand.

"Where are we?" he asked as he swung his feet out of the car.

"Somewhere west of Albuquerque."

"Not Ohio then." Sam stretched the kinks out of his back, still trying to get his bearings.

"What?"

"Don't worry about it."

Dean's look took in the low growing mesquite, sandy soils and the flat top mesa's that framed the horizon to the north. "If you think we're in Ohio, I am worried."

"I can tell the difference between the northeast and the southwest, Dean," Sam said, irritably.

"Can you tell the difference between when your eyes are open and closed? Because I think you've spent more hours asleep than awake since I picked you back up."

Sam stifled a sigh. "I'm on vacation."

"You just had a vacation not even a month ago."

"That was work-related."

"What work?" Dean snorted. "We've been spinning our wheels for years at this point."

"Well, it wasn't relaxing."

"If you relaxed any more, you'd be dead."

"You would know."

"Yeah, I would. So get up and move around some before you calcify. At least you're not still claiming you're old."

Sam cast him a look that could have stripped the remaining paint from the building, but did as instructed and stood up to stretch. The building was locked up tight. He didn't think sunflower seeds and a place to take a leak really justified a broken window, so Sam kept an eye out for rattlesnakes and made a circuit around to the back of the building to deal with the more pressing need.

Dean was waiting for him in the car when he got back.

"All set?"

"Yeah. Where to now?"

"Onwards, I guess. Road goes thataway. You going back to sleep?"

"Maybe," Sam said, noncommittally. The answer was probably closer to 'definitely,' but he didn't want to listen to the argument again.

Dean started in on it anyways. "This is starting to be less just weird and more of an actual problem, Sam. Maybe we should just find a clinic somewhere and get you tested."

"You want me to just walk in and tell them I don't think I'm getting enough vitamin-whatever and do they mind checking for me?"

"Sure, why not? You're paying, what do they care what kind of lab work they run? But you might get better results if you start the conversation with 'I sleep twenty hours out of every twenty-four and do you mind seeing if I've got some kind of tapeworm or something?' I hear doctors like those kinds of things."

"I don't have a tapeworm."

"How would you know?"

"Where would I have gotten a _tapeworm_?" Sam demanded.

"Where do most people get them? The store? I don't know."

"I'm just tired, Dean," Sam repeated his usual manta patiently. "Wanting a few more hours of sleep isn't a crisis. I'm not twenty anymore."

Dean looked like he wanted to say something, but then snorted his opinion and let the argument lie in favor of turning up the stereo and putting another fifty miles under the wheels.

  
~~~~~

 

It had been six weeks since Dean had dragged Sam out of Kansas, and nothing had changed. No visions, no visitations, nothing but mutual annoyance and a thorough road trip to confirm that the continental United States was still as intact as ever.

"This is stupid," Sam announced late one night, as he rolled socks together on a scuffed plastic table under the fluorescent lights of a twenty-four hour laundry. Dean sat on the adjacent table, eating cold pizza and messing with his phone. Or Sam's phone. Sam didn't have the motivation to investigate. Dean usually limited his entertainment to changing ringtones around, which was pretty petty and easily fixed as far as indulging his impulses towards chaos went. The one time he'd changed the language setting to Czech had been interesting. At least that was a _new_ fight to have.

"You lost the bet," Dean said without looking up. Something on the phone beeped in protest. Unfazed, Dean slid his thumb across the screen and Sam caught the distinct flicker of his own background screen. He sighed, but made no protest.

"It wasn't a bet," Sam realized the socks he was matching actually didn't, and pulled them apart with more force than necessary. "It was a game, and I _wouldn't_ have lost if you hadn't spotted the zeppelin museum before I did."

"Then maybe you should have listened when Dad told you to eat your carrots."

"Really? Carrots? That's what you're going to go with?"

"How else do you explain my amazing eyesight? Also my fantastic physique, excellent taste, and--" the phone beeped again and Abba's Dancing Queen spilled into the air around them. "Oops." Dean shut it off with another hasty swipe. "Pretend you didn't hear that."

"The billboard was a quarter mile away!"

"Why, Sam," Dean began in tones of mock hurt, still not diverting his attention away from the phone in his hand. "Are you accusing me of using some kind of unfair advantage to cheat at the alphabet game just so you would have to do my laundry? That's like... the lowest of the low. Only a filthy, no-good, son of a--"

"Yeah, I agree," Sam said, giving him a dirty look.

"It's not like we haven't driven this way a bazillion times, Sam. Maybe I just remembered it was there," Dean suggested with deeply unconvincing innocence.

"And maybe we can solve crime with the power of dance," Sam retorted.

"Only if this Laundromat has magically transported us back to 1980. What's stupid?"

"What?"

"You said 'this is stupid.' I assumed you weren't talking about the laundry."

"No, not the laundry." Sam rolled the last two socks together then grabbed his duffle bag from the floor and dropped it onto the table so he could start putting his clothes away. Laundry was done. Dean could put his own damn clothes up. "We should be looking for answers, for _anything_ that might help us. Instead, we just wander around the countryside doing a whole lot of _nothing_ and--"

"Waiting for you to get a clue?"

"I'm not the only one in this, Dean! This was _your_ quest, and if our only game plan is waiting for whatever's going on in my head to wake the hell up and point us in a direction, then what exactly were _you_ going to do if I opted out of this little adventure?"

Dean shrugged. "My only plan was for derailing Lilith's agenda. Which we did, and it was _awesome_." He smiled briefly at the memory, then grew more serious again. "Anything after that was going to be winging it."

"That's great, Dean." Sam zipped his bag closed with a harsh jerk, then dropped Dean's duffle onto the table next to the remaining folded pile. He stepped back in clear invitation. "That's fantastic. Next time some kind of entity from another _plane of existence_ wants you to do it a favor, how about you get a few more details before you agree?"

Dean tossed Sam his phone back, then slid off the table and started putting his own clothes away. "I wasn't in a strong negotiating position, _Sam_." 

"You were in a better position than we are now, _Dean_."

There was silence for a long moment while Sam fumed and Dean finished packing his own bag. "This is all old news," Dean said finally. "What are you really pissed about?"

"There's nothing here!" Sam exploded.

Two aisles over, a woman walking a restless baby glared at them, and couple of college-age looking guys playing cards by the door glanced over to see what the shouting was about. Dean gave them all a bland, reassuring smile and lowered his voice. "We don't really need to share our problems with the rest of the class, do we, Sam?" Sam glared but didn't respond otherwise. "Now, what do you mean there's 'nothing here'? We weren't really expecting big things out of--" Dean eyed the tag on the dryer across the aisle, "Linda's Discount Wash and Go, were we?"

"This country, the entire place is just… too young, too new, too limited. We need to be in Europe. We need to be looking through libraries and source material of the kinds of things no one around here can even _dream_ of. They've got books of prophecy, and artifacts, and histories, and--"

"Moldy libraries, hunchbacks, bats, belfries, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. I know. But it’s all crap, and you know it." Dean, disinclined to continue the conversation with an audience, shouldered his duffle bag, grabbed Sam by the elbow, and steered them towards the door.

"How can you say that!" Sam demanded when they were back in the parking lot, alone under the sodium lights. "How can you just write off entire collections of the greatest repositories of this kind of information on the _pla--_ "

"I can write them all off," Dean interrupted harshly, "because there's not damn thing there that can help us. And I know _that_ , because when we tried to get on a plane to go visit said wonderlands of information, you got all the way to the boarding gate and then you couldn't take another damn step. All five times we tried it. You couldn't get on a plane, you couldn't get on a boat, we can't get much past Tijuana before you start squirming around like you've got ants in your boxers, and it's not the cold that makes you miserable when we head too far north. Unless you're going to confess to some sudden and deep seated fear of travel, which I really think I would have noticed at some point in the last thirty-odd years, Sam, I'm going to go with our original decision, which was that whatever we're supposed to be finding or doing, it's _here_."

"Maybe we should try again," Sam growled, but then lapsed into silence for the short walk to their motel across the street. Dean locked the door while Sam flung himself down dispiritedly on one of the beds. It dipped alarmingly under his weight, but Sam barely seemed to notice. Dean tossed his gear on the bed closest to the door and gingerly took a seat in the battered folding chair that had been left leaning conveniently against the radiator. Moving it caused an immediate reduction in the rattling racket that had filled the room.

"I hear your frustration, Sam. But everything has been here. The cage, the crypt, the Seals we were involved with, Lilith, angels, demons, you, me... That's all been right here in the good old U S of A."

"Because this is where the cage opened."

"Sure. Because the crap with Lucifer's fan club went down in freaking Illchester and everything's revolved around that. But we're still dealing with things on a cosmic sort of scale with some predestined crap involved. Those kinds of things don't really come together by accident. And it's still all been right, freaking--"

Sam rolled over on the mattress to face him, hazel eyes dark and unhappy in the dim motel lighting. "I've got it, Dean."

Dean risked leaning the chair back on two legs. "I'm just saying that when we tried to hop an ocean and check new digs, you flat out said you couldn't. And whatever's in your head that's been guiding you along so far has been doing a pretty good job, so I'm inclined to trust something you're that adamantly opposed too, you know? It's not like anything else has been killing itself to shine some guiding light on us."

"It's not guiding me now."

"Sam."

"I'm just saying, Dean. It's been, you know, _forever_."

"It's only been about a year since we stuffed Lilith and her playmates back in the box."

"That wasn't part of this. Not really. It was important, but it wasn't part of the quest."

"I don't know what you want me to say, Sam."

"Nothing," Sam said despondently. "I don't want you to say anything."  

"Okay." Dean watched as Sam toed off his shoes and closed his eyes. He doubted Sam planned to sleep in his current position, not with half his legs hanging off the bed, but something in the drawn expression on his face had Dean counting back the days. As much as Sam had mangled the curse over the last few years, and with as many barricades as Dean was holding between them, it was hard for Dean to tell when the curse was pulling on Sam anymore. Before it had practically been a neon light, Sam's emotions and physical state saturating the link between them, always there in the back of Dean's mind. He knew when to push and when to wait, knew when the saw-toothed edge of need was cutting into Sam's mind, and even more when it burned like a physical ache in his body. He could tell with less effort than thought when Sam would cave to good sense, and when he would resist the inevitable.

When he would be welcomed in Sam's bed without any conversation at all.

Sam had always had an annoying need to make simple things unreasonably complicated, and his insistence on the barricades had driven them to a calendar-based approach. Because Dean didn't trust Sam to speak up on his own, and because Sam had gotten good over time at hiding when he was feeling the raw edge of the curse, he had four weeks to come to Dean himself before Dean forced the issue. Sam got his mental privacy, Dean got... well, mostly a headache, but also Sam's generally willing compliance. And if everyone wasn't entirely thrilled, at least they were equally annoyed.

And sometimes, outside of necessity, Sam would go to Dean on his own anyways. For Dean those times were the best. A voluntary capitulation of need from Sam that fed other, less affectionate, impulses in Dean that he tried to keep from flavoring whatever passed between them in those moments. Dean figured Sam knew, but knowing it and feeling it were different animals entirely.

One was much easier to ignore.

So Dean counted the days back since their last little liaison and blood-letting party, then eyed his brother narrowly. "Tonight?" he asked. Sam didn't answer immediately, but he didn't need an explanation either, so Dean just waited.

"No," Sam finally said, not bothering to open his eyes.

"You sure?"

"I've had enough togetherness for today. I just want to sleep."

Dean snorted. "How is that new?"

Sam's eyes opened to slits, just enough to glare. "Some of us are still among the living, Dean. I'm not going to apologize for actually having to rest occasionally."  

"Whatever. You care if I leave the bathroom light on while I read?"

Sam squirmed up on the mattress, mumbled something incoherent against the comforter and flipped half of it over his body. Dean waited until Sam relaxed into a deeper sleep, then pushed him onto his back so he could unfasten Sam's jeans and drag them off before grabbing the comforter from the other bed and folding it down over Sam too. The air conditioner only had two settings, off and arctic winter, and it was too damn muggy for off. Sam's eyelashes barely twitched during the manhandling.

Dean frowned down at him.

There was just something _unnatural_ about Sam's sleep. It was too deep, too... pervasive. But try as Dean could, there was no hint of actual manipulation that he could find. No sign on Sam's aura that there was outside interference, and the blood that really should have cured any physical ailment while topping off Sam's demonic reserves made no changes at all. Sam insisted there wasn't a problem in the first place, that needing a few more hours here and there was normal. But Sam had never witnessed himself being handled like a rag doll in a motel room without even a flicker of true consciousness. He'd never seen himself blink slowly mid-sentence and then slump against the Impala's door in practically a coma, only to awaken hours later and insist he was _fine_. Sam's overly patient tones and the word "fine" were both things Dean had had more than enough of.  Sam _wasn't_ fine, and Dean had already taken steps to test out the only real theory Sam had offered. Steps he was going to have to have taken anyways eventually, so he had little compunction about going ahead with his plans. Even without Sam's technical permission.

Only time would tell if it improved anything or not.

 

** Chapter Three **

It took a long time to  
become the thing I am to you.  
And you won't tear it apart  
without a fight, without a heart.  
                           ~Become You, Indigo Girls

Dean favored roadside bars outside of city limits, places where people knew how to mind their own business. Where no one called the cops if the occasional dispute over a game of pool spilled out into the parking lot with split lips and busted knuckles. Dean had always won most of those fights.

He won all of them now.

Sam favored quieter establishments. He liked bars where the tables were clean and the atmosphere inviting. Where people did call the cops if a fight broke out and there was more than one beer on tap.

Places that suited both of their tastes were few and far between.

"When you said we’d split the difference, I kind of thought at least my feet wouldn't stick to the floor," Sam muttered, as he ducked into the smoke-hazed main room of a place that had almost certainly never been visited by a health inspector.

Dean's grim mood from the last few weeks had started improving as soon as he'd crossed the threshold. He drew in a deep lungful of the stale air and looked around, satisfied. Bare light bulbs were strung randomly over tables and the bar itself, while corrugated aluminum paneled the back walls and reflected the harsh light with an unappealing metallic glare. Even with the creative approach to interior design, there crowd was pretty healthy for a Tuesday night. "What are you whining about now? This place smells like easy money, and lots of it."

"That's not what it smells like to me," Sam said, not bothering to hide his distaste of the place. He shifted, subtly checking the floor's adhesion factor again. He could hear the crackle of his soles peeling free even over the tinny country music and the restless din of the crowd. "How do you even _find_ these places?"

"I'm drawn to them," Dean assured him, "it's like a gift. Besides, I'm sure it's not the whole floor. They probably just spilled something here."

"Nightly since nineteen seventy-five?" 

"It's not like we were planning to eat off of it, Sam. This is a bar. Alcohol, remember? The food only exists so you can drink more." He glanced at Sam's face, then elbowed him in the side. "You keep scowling like that you'll scare off all the easy marks." The locals had given them both a good once over, and then turned dismissively back to their own business, but there were plenty of people loitering around a couple of pool tables in an alcove at the other end of the main bar room that looked ripe for the right kind of pickings.

Sam rubbed at his ribs and glared. "I thought you said you wanted a drink."

"I said I wanted to find a bar," Dean answered, distracted by his evening plans.

"Which is usually where people go when they want to drink."

"Or to score loads of easy cash off drunk rednecks. Did you miss that lesson or something? Go… drown your sorrows or something. You're raining bad vibes all over my mojo."

" _I'm_ raining bad vibes?" Sam echoed incredulously, but he was talking to himself. Dean was already threading his way through the maze of chairs and tables to reach the pool tables. Abandoned and with nothing better to do, Sam drifted over and took a seat at the bar with vague plans to nurse several drinks throughout the evening until Dean had either gotten them thrown out or was bored enough to leave. They were running about fifty-fifty on their exits lately.

He could have insisted on being left at a motel room, but there was something about the undemanding companionship of a crowd of people just out enjoying an evening that appealed to Sam on a basic level. Amidst the tangle of psychic powers, reality rending conflicts, demons, angels, prophecy and nightmare -- the world was still the same world it had always been, and reminding himself of that provided a certain thread of comfort.

Of course, he only had to turn his head and catch sight of Dean for a concrete reminder that just because the world was as it had always been, didn't mean his own personal reality hadn't been firmly upended. General musings on the unfairness of life and trying to remember if he'd packed his toothbrush in the motel that morning were good for a couple of hours while he halfheartedly watched the basketball game playing silently over the bar.

"Hey there."

He turned his head to meet a pair of flirty blue eyes set in an attractive, smiling, face. Sam, who'd been a sucker for pretty blue eyed girls long before he'd met Jessica, smiled back reflexively. The girl tucked wavy brown hair behind one ear and nodded towards a nearby table where another woman was watching them both with an expression of mortification. "I'm Ella. My friend Sidney over there thinks you're cute." Ella's smile widened a fraction. "She has pretty good taste. Come here alone?"

Sam blinked at her, thrown for a loop by the unexpectedness of the conversation. No one had tried to pick him up in years. Much less women who, if they weren't actually in college, were certainly in the right age range. He glanced over to find where Dean was in all this, but his brother was still entrenched in his pool hustling and seemed oblivious to whatever Sam was up too.

"You don't think I'm a little old?" Sam asked her finally, at a loss for where to steer the conversation. Over at the table Sidney buried her face in her hands as Ella raked him with an openly appraising look.

"You're what, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight maybe?" Ella asked. "That's not that old. I'll be twenty-two in April. Sidney's twenty-three. Besides, age isn't everything you know." Ella's smile grew even more inviting, but Sam's bemused friendliness faded a little at her estimation. She seemed serious about the guess on his age and that was just…weird. Thirty-eight years of mostly rough living hadn't been exactly unkind, but no one should have been guessing his age a decade off.

Ella smile faltered a little as, not understanding the problem, she felt him withdraw from her. "I just wanted to see if you were interested in having a drink with us. No rings involved."

But Sam was barely listening, instead he was looking down at where his hand rested on the bar. Looking just like his hand always looked. Except… he let go of his drink and turned both his hands over, examining the fronts and backs with a scrutiny he usually only gave weapons and useful texts. Most of the injuries he'd picked up since Ruby entangled herself in his life all those years ago had left no visible mark, but there had been _some_. The little nicks and dings from a life on the road that scabbed over and healed in the weeks between the power exchanges that left everything renewed and mending. An ugly suspicion began to creep into his mind. He cast a harder look over to where Dean was still playing pool, but his brother seemed as oblivious as before.

"Hello?"

Sam forced his attention back to Ella. "Sorry, I'm a little… distracted."

"No kidding." She frowned. "You aren't… on something, are you? You just look a little out of it."

"Uh, no. No, just--"

"You've got a girlfriend," she surmised.

"No," Sam answered reflexively, and then immediately kicked himself for missing the easy out.

"Bad break-up?" Ella tried again. She sounded a little hopeful at this point, probably trying to find an excuse for his lack of interest that wouldn't prick her self-esteem.

Sam wasn't used to people being so helpful in a conversation he was trying, badly, to escape. He managed a weak smile. "Something like that."

"It's cool," she said immediately, looking almost relieved. "We just saw you sitting alone and thought we'd check you out. Not many new guys coming to a joint like this." Sam didn't know why _anyone_ would come to a joint like this, but asking her would probably cross a few lines of politeness and Sam was feeling rather grateful to Ella.

"Maybe another night," he offered. Ella waved noncommittally and made her way back to her friend. Sam took the opportunity to slide off his barstool and head for the bathroom.

  
~~~~~

 

"Yo, Sam? You in here?" Dean called as he pulled open the bathroom door with a grimace. The handle was actually tacky, and he was grateful that germs weren't something he was concerned with anymore. The door itself hung a few inches crooked in the raw wooden frame and squealed loudly enough to make his ears hurt as he forced it to move. Dean didn't have the impression a lot of the male patrons bothered with the official bathroom when they needed to take a leak, as there was a lot more traffic going through the propped open rear exit.

He'd seen Sam vanish through the actual restroom door almost twenty minutes earlier, but distracted by the game, it had taken him awhile to notice when Sam didn't return. The kneejerk instinct to check Sam's mental state had slammed into his own, frustrating, barriers -- but even through the dense psychic weaving Sam was thrumming with… something. It didn't have quite the right rawness to it to be fear, but it was intense, and deep and nothing that Sam usually felt like. Dean forfeited a couple of hundred on the game without a thought in favor of hunting his brother down.

"Sam?" The room was a long L, and there was no question as to where Sam was. Dean could feel only one living presence in the room, and the beat of that heart was more familiar to him than his own. The answer to what Sam was feeling was apparent as soon as Dean turned the corner.

Rage.

Sam was so angry that his knuckles shown yellowish white through the tight skin of his hands where he gripped the sides of the porcelain sink. He didn't even bother turning his head to meet Dean's gaze, just stared at himself in the mirror, lips set in a thin, compressed line and eyes bright with fury. Dean wasn't even sure Sam could talk with his jaw clenched that hard, but it wasn't like the problem wasn't a big mystery. Dean had been half waiting for the explosion for weeks.

"What did you do to me," Sam demanded in a tight, low voice.

Dean felt suddenly tired in a way he seldom had since clawing his way out of Hell. Some fights he just didn't want to have. Which was why he'd acted instead of asking, and why he hadn't bothered to tell Sam after the fact either. It hadn't been up for discussion, so not discussing it had worked out well. For awhile. "What I had to."

"What you _had_ too? Look at me! I'm like--"

"Thirty again?"

"The girls in the bar guessed _twenty-fucking-seven_ , Dean. Twenty-seven! I'm almost _forty_. What the hell have you done?!"

Dean crossed his arms, unimpressed. "You know, Sam. A lot of people would be thanking me about now."

" _Thanking_ you?" Sam straightened up to face him directly. "For what, Dean? This is my _life_. It's… it's my _body_. It's not some fucking toy for you to mess with on some whim just because you can! What were you _thinking_?"

"I was thinking that--" The bathroom door squealed open and a giggling couple practically fell into the room. Dean glanced back at them. Sam couldn't see his face, but whatever the couple saw in it had them muttering a hasty apology and fleeing. "--Here isn't the place to have this conversation."

"No, but the motel _is_ ," Sam said, sarcasm thick enough to cut.

"At least it's practically deserted," Dean snapped back. "Not _here_."

Not here, with breakable things like buildings, and people, and the trust between them.

"Or maybe," Dean continued, "you think we should just go back out into the bar and let everyone get a good front row seat?"

Put like that… "I'm not getting in the car with you," Sam spat.

"Take a cab then," Dean said thinly. "But feel free to imagine my reaction if you aren't back within an hour and I have to come looking for you."

  
~~~~~

 

Dean barely waited for the door to slam behind Sam, who stormed into their room less than fifteen minutes after Dean himself had arrived, before he picked up where they had left off. The brief pause hadn't put a dint in either of their tempers.

"You think I did this on a _whim_?" Dean demanded. "Let's talk about _whims_ . You said you would help me with this quest, you said we were in this _together_."

Sam stared at him, momentarily shocked free of his own anger by the unexpectedness of the attack. "I am helping you, we are in this-- what the hell does _this_ have to do with--"

"You might not have noticed, Sam, but we aren't making a whole hell of a lot of speedy progress on this little adventure. It's been kind of a couple of years since we started this now, and we're still rocking a whole lot of zero in the progress category. You're the best lead we've have for any of this crap, and that lead isn't panning out too fast. Which I'm okay with, as long as you're actually _with_ me, and not moldering in some roadside grave, leaving me here to kick it here by myself. We sent the major players back to the Pit for a century to get some breathing room, but you're not going to _be_ breathing for a century. At the rate we're going, you might not even get another decade in the natural order of things. Maybe less. You duck awfully slow. You think this is the first thing I've changed about you? You change a little with every mouthful of my blood you swallow," Dean said derisively. "You think it's normal that someone of your _advanced years,_ who's lived such a calm and sedentary kind of life doesn't have to down a handful of painkillers just to get out of bed in the morning? You've been reaping the physical side benefits of screwing around with the demonic for years -- sorry having it suddenly up in your face is so traumatic!"

"That's completely different, _Dean_."

"Oh, so you knew." Dean's sarcasm was almost a tangible thing.

"No, I didn't know! I mean…" Sam trailed off. He'd seen wounds the entire length of his torso erase themselves in hours as a side effect of the curse. It wasn't a big deductive leap to think it could be having a more subtle effect. "Maybe I did. But that's not the fucking point, Dean! What happens with the curse -- it just _happens_. I don't have any control over that. Shut up," he snapped before Dean could interject. "Not real control. It's a side effect, not a deliberate action. Whatever happens with that isn't the same as you doing this shit to me on _purpose_."

"You're pissed because you've gotten _younger_? Do you know how insane that sounds?"

"I'm pissed you did this without asking me! And yeah, I'm pissed I've gotten _younger_. I've lived my life, Dean. I've earned every one of those years, and I've earned every one of my scars!"

"Really?" Dean asked pointedly. "Pick up a lot of these scars in the last few years, have you?"

Sam's hands balled involuntarily into fists. "You had no fucking right to do this."

"It's done. And you're awfully excited about something you _didn't even notice_."

"I don't spend a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror, Dean! I mean… how long has this been going on?"

"A few weeks."

"How many is a few?" Sam asked, suspiciously.

Dean shrugged. "It's not that big of a change, Sam."

"Ten years?! It's kinda big, Dean!"

"It's not like I punched something into a computer! I just… wanted to run back your odometer a little. You weren't old before, and… you're, you know, less old now."

"Old? What the--" Sam's comment bit off as connections made themselves in his mind. "Is this because you think I'm sleeping too much?" He demanded, even more outraged if possible. "I start grabbing an extra hour or two of sleep and you _take a decade off my life_?!"

Dean scowled. "I _added_ a decade, genius. I didn't _steal_ one from you. And it's probably not even that much. I just… wanted to see if it made you better. Nothing else has worked."

"Because there isn't anything wrong! I've been _telling_ you that for wee--"

"There _is_ something wrong," Dean snapped. "I don't know why you can't see it, but there is. It's not natural, Sam. You said Missouri didn't see anything, you can't detect anything, and there's nothing I can find when I look myself, but there is _something very wrong_ , and it's only getting worse. I'm just about out of fucking ideas here, and you just wander around all blissfully insisting that either you're fine, or you're _old_."

"That was a _joke_ , Dean!" Sam was having trouble not yelling by this point, but his frustration was quickly exceeding what mere snarling and swearing could express.

"Well, at least it _was_ a freaking theory! Which is more than I could come up with. And, you know, you're still falling into just as much of a coma, so it was a _bad_ theory. Congratulations."

"Coma? What are you talking about?"

"You think it's your keen, highly developed hunter instincts that let me move you around like a rag doll while you're _sleeping_? You don't notice that you fall asleep between words sometimes, and wake up with the sun on the other side of the freaking car?"

"Maybe if we stopped for more than four hours at a time at night, I wouldn't! You're the one who claims to be too bored to let me actually _get_ a good seven hours in a real bed. Or six. Or when was the last time we stayed in one place for even five? I'm barely closing my eyes some nights before you're dropping my shoes on my chest and telling me to get back in the freaking car!"

"That's not what's going on," Dean said, voice laced with impatience. "And since you won't even admit there _is_ a problem, don't bitch at me about what I have to do to try to fix it!"

"This isn't a _fix_!"

"So you do admit there's a problem?" Dean asked, in a reasonable enough voice that Sam wanted to throw something at him.

" _No_ ," Sam growled, "I _don't_ admit there's a problem. But if there _was,_ then whatever the hell you've done to me clearly hasn't fixed it. So you can just presto chango me back to how I was before!"

"Hmmm." Dean slouched against the wall and almost looked like he was considering it for a moment, then shook his head with mock gravity. "No, I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Why not?" Sam demanded.

"I told you," Dean shrugged, "it's not some kind of exact science. It's just intent, and focus, and wrapping you in as much entropy as I can pull through these freaking wards I'm hogtied with. Add some time for seasoning, and… there you go. I mean, you don't really _want_ to wake up eighty, do you, Sam?"

"I really hate you, Dean," Sam said fervently.

"And I think I can really handle that in five minute increments, _Sam_."

"You think I'm going to be over this in _five minutes_?"

"I think you're so pissed off that you're forgetting the _other_ reason for me to do this."

Silence filled the room for a few minutes while Sam tried to get his temper under control and Dean just watched.

"No," Sam finally spoke up, tired and with the anger banked somewhat. "No, I'm not forgetting."

"Did you really just plan to up and die on me in a few years? Quest or not?"

"I… didn't think about it." Sam frowned. "That's kind of how being human and alive works, Dean. I didn't think there was another option."

"This is the other option," Dean said flatly. "Outside of some really inadvisable rituals and maybe that Frankenstein thing."

"Yeah. No. So… what's this plan then?" Sam laughed with no hint of real levity. "Every few years you just roll the clock back a little?"

Dean shrugged.

"That's a shitty plan, Dean."

"Only if you weren't planning to go the distance with me."

"You know that's not the problem."

"I'm not sure I _see_ a problem."

"You should have asked me! You should have _told_ me."

"Well, I kinda thought it would be obvious. And if it happened slowly enough that it wasn't, then…"

"Then why bother telling me at all?" Sam finished for him. "I'm not a toy to play with, _Dean_. This is _my_ body, and it's _my_ life." Sam's anger was spiraling again, he made no effort to restrain it. "I put up with a ton of shit for this grand quest of yours. More than anyone should have to. My _entire life_ has revolved around this crap in one way or another, and you don't get to try and tell me that if you hadn't sat down and _discussed_ it with me, that I wouldn't have eventually agreed to this too. We _are_ in this together, and you don't get to _make_ these fucking decisions without me. I can't believe you did this!"

Dean's eyes narrowed. "There is something wrong with you, Sam. And you've resisted every freaking attempt I've made to _sit down and discuss it_. You treat it like it's some running joke that I'm annoying you with. _This_ was going to happen, you just admitted it was going to happen even if I had given you the heads up. I didn't want to put up with the whining while I'm _worried sick_ about what's going on with you. Maybe what's happening is fucking with your body _and_ your mind, because it's not like _that_ hasn't happened before. Remember, Sam? So maybe I talk to you, and you refuse because you're _fucked up_ , again, and then what? I do it anyways? You say you hate me right now for doing this without asking you, how excited would you have been if I'd asked, you'd said no, and I did it anyways?"

"That's a bullshit argument, Dean!"

"Yeah, well. That's the best you're getting right now. You've added a few years and some flexibility to your lifespan. It's done now, it's not going to be _un_ done, and anyone else on the planet would be freaking ecstatic. So why don't you shut the hell up and we can move on to something _else_ that's going to make you unhappy."

"Jesus, Dean. What _else_ have you done?"

"This is more about what I'm going to do. What we're going to do." Dean straightened up from where he was slouched against the wall. He let his battered leather jacket slide down and off his arms until he could drape it over the top of the television. Sam's gaze involuntarily tracked the shift of muscles in Dean's newly bared arms until he realized what he was doing and jerked his gaze away, swallowing hard. Dean's smile was lazy and edged.

"Yeah. It's that time again. _Past_ time even. Which I'm really not happy about, Sam. We had an agreement about this."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "No. Not when I'm still this angry."

Dean's edges turned more predatory and his eyes darkened. Still human dark, but the threat was there. "Are we seriously back to this, Sam? You're obviously hurting, you watch me like you're aching for it when you don't remember not to, and if it's that clear then we should have done this _days_ ago. You only get to say 'no' for so long before you don't get a say anymore and I don't _care_ if you're angry with me. Just adds that little extra spice." He took a step forward and Sam stepped back, catching the edge of the dresser with the back of one foot and almost falling. He was going to end up backed into the bathroom counter if he kept giving ground, but not giving ground was sadly not an option with Dean still advancing. If he managed to get his bare hands on Sam's skin, Sam knew he would be lost to any kind of resistance. He'd had enough decisions taken out of his hands lately, and there were other considerations.

"Not while _you're_ still this angry then," Sam tried, fighting back the first faint flutter of panic. Dean had won this particular fight before in worse circumstances, but that had been before Sam had understood the truth about his brother's nature, and had been exposed first hand to the scouring winds of entropy that raged at the core of Dean's being. The wards that had been broken before were strong now, and that kind of bleed-over shouldn’t be possible. He didn't think so, at least. But angry and frustrated… Sam didn't know how much Dean could pull through the divide anymore, and Sam would do a lot more than beg to avoid experiencing a polar force of nature shred the edges of his self again. Or worse.

Sam could see the moment Dean understood Sam's reluctance ripple across his face. He finally stopped advancing, in easy reach of where Sam was pressed against the edge of the sink. Sam half expected Dean to reach out anyways, and hated the part of himself that wished Dean would.

Dean's hands flexed as he watched Sam, indecision still shifting in his eyes.

"I'm going out," Dean announced finally.

"Okay," Sam agreed, cautiously.

"You're not going to step one foot out of this room while I'm gone," Dean continued.

Sam nodded, mutely. He just wanted Dean to _go_ , and give them both some breathing room.

"We're going to deal with this when I get back. It's _stupid_ , Sam. I thought we were done with all this crap."

"I know. I know. I didn't mean to put it off this long. I just… lost track of the days."

Dean snorted and patted his pockets down, checking for his keys and wallet. Sam's shoulders relaxed as some of the tension bled from the room.

Dean ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "You can't screw around with this, Sam. One day I'm going to be off running an errand, and you're going to be riding this way out on the edge, and a demon is going to kick the freaking door down and drag you off and you're going to feel really stupid that you can't even defend yourself because you couldn't be bothered to do something every fiber of your body wants to do _anyways_. Just because we deported most of the problem children back to the Pit for awhile doesn't mean there aren't plenty of lesser pests still running around who wouldn't jump at a chance to serve you up on a platter."

"It wasn't that, I was just…" Sam let his voice trail off and found something else to look at beside his brother.

"Tired?" Dean demanded. "Is _tired_ what you were going to say? Too _tired_ to get naked and recharge the old batteries a little? Too _tired_ to answer a curse that's stamped across the fabric of your very being? That kind of tired, Sam? You sure you still want to try and tell me that there's nothing going on with you I should be worried about? That maybe _we_ should be worried about?"

"I thought you were going out," Sam said pointedly.

Dean rolled his eyes and retreated, scooping his jacket back up as he reached for the door handle. "Not one _toe_ outside this door, Sam. And if you even _look_ reluctant when I get back, I'm just going to tie you up and do whatever the hell I want to with you anyways. You'd probably like that, you can blame it all on me." The slam of the door punctuated his statement.

Sam glared at the door for a moment, then turned to examine his reflection in the mirror over the sink. The lighting was better than at the bar. Even knowing what he was looking at, it still took some time to find concrete things to point at that made him look different than he thought he should. There were fewer lines at the corners of his eyes, and maybe around his mouth. Worry lines mostly, but there were definitely less than there had been. Maybe less heaviness to his jaw, a certain lightness to his complexion. He _did_ look younger, but pointing to where or why was hard. Maybe hard enough that he didn't need to kill Dean quite so fast.

Maybe.

He was still lividly pissed, but Dean might have had a valid point somewhere in all his crap excuses. Something to think about later. Sam closed his eyes and tried to find a peaceful center, some breathing space in his own thoughts, then went ahead and got ready for bed. Whatever else happened later in the night, it was unlikely to involve a lot of sleep, and Sam was already exhausted.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

** Chapter Four **

Are you lost or incomplete?  
Do you feel like a puzzle, you can't find your missing piece?  
Tell me how do you feel?  
Well, I feel like they're talking in a language I don't speak  
And they're talking it to me  
       ~Talk, Coldplay

Sam opened his eyes with great reluctance. He focused on the steady red glow of the clock radio display, the time shining with painful vividness as it sat on the nightstand in front of him.

Two a.m.

Barely three hours of sleep. He felt like his eyes had just shut.

He blinked slowly as he lay curled on his side under a heavy comforter, the air conditioner a low, rattling buzz at his back and the distant sounds of traffic on the street a familiar white noise, trying to figure out what had startled him from sleep. He waited, but everything seemed okay. Light from the parking lot seeped around the edges of the black-out curtains, leaving the room in a dim twilight that his eyes adjusted to easily. Distant on another floor there was a faint thump and the muffled sound of drunken laughter. Nothing that required his attention.

Sam sleepily decided it had probably been people walking near the window, or maybe unexpected noise from an adjacent room. Things were quiet enough now. Sam gave serious thought to getting up and checking the doors and security again, but the moment was passing quickly as his eyelids drifted shut. He tried to shift onto his back, but there was something heavy pinning the blankets down. This was just starting to register as being worthy of concern when a hand snaked over his waist above the covers, stilling his instinctive jerk away.

"You can be a bitch, but you're not usually this much of a bitch."

Sam sagged back into the mattress, torn between annoyance and relief. His anger from earlier seemed like too much effort on too little sleep, something that could be revisited in the morning. If Dean would just leave him alone… Sam didn't mind if he just wanted to lie there...

"Did you even know who I was?" Dean asked.

"Sure. Who else would you be?" Sam slurred.

"Might have been a good idea to actually check. For future reference and all."

Sam nodded against the pillow and closed his eyes again.

"I'm sorry about, you know, without telling you first."

That sparked enough of the earlier irritation to bring Sam a little more lucidity. "Asking me, Dean. The problem was not _asking_ me," he growled, eyes still firmly shut.

"Whatever," Dean said airily. "Same thing."

"They're _not_ \--" Sam began, trying to shove Dean's arm off in annoyance, but Dean just pressed in closer against his back and showed no inclination towards being moved. Sam gave it up as a bad cause and grudgingly relaxed again. "Fine. Thanks."

Silence fell in the shadows of the room again for several long minutes. Sam just wanted to drift off again, but there was a sense of wakefulness to Dean at his back that told Sam it would be a wasted effort. "What?" he finally demanded.

"You didn't know it was me. Did you know there was anyone here at all?"

"I said I would check next time I wake up with another person in my bed, Dean. Maybe I'll get lucky and it won't be my brother, you know?" Sam snapped.

"Yeah, maybe it'll be Lilith. Or who was that demon you were making out with last year while I was trying to save the world? Crowley? That would be fun. Or possibly just some axe murderer who walked in through the unlocked front door and decided to try the mattress out for his collection before cutting your throat. This isn't exactly an upscale address."

Sam's eyes flew open. "I left the door unlocked?"

"No, I'm just saying."

 Sam rolled onto his back, forcing Dean to scoot over until they lay shoulder to shoulder. "Lilith is in hell for at least a couple of decades, and you might not remember since you were a little _out of your mind_ at the time, but Crowley and I were doing business. I needed the Colt."

"Apparently not," Dean snorted, "since one of your angelic pen pals turned it into a puddle right after you got your hands on it, and things still worked out just fine."

"Well, I _thought_ I needed the Colt," Sam allowed, "so at the time it was the reasonable thing to do."

"They have other names for transactions that involve kissing, Sam."

"Seriously?" Sam propped himself up on one elbow so he could look down at Dean; there was just enough light to make out his basic features. "This, from you? And you can just shut up about axe murderers. At this point in my life, that's a best case scenario. Plus, you know, I have a gun."

"That doesn't help you if you don't know they're in the room," Dean said pointedly. He folded his arms under his head and crossed his ankles, fully dressed down to his boots. The thin strip of skin across his belly was pale in the dark room, visible above the waistband of his jeans where his t-shirt rode up. Sam watched him for a long moment, feeling the aching emptiness in places he could usually ignore, a weight pressing heavier against his mind and his body. Like every cell was smothering in his flesh, and Dean was the only air. He'd grown better at ignoring it over time, used to the dull ache and resisting the pull, but there was always a price for dragging it out too long. And a more personal price for even making the attempt.

Sam glanced over his shoulder, but the dark shadow of his duffle bag on the other bed was too far to reach without getting up, and whatever was going to happen in the next few minutes, he had no intention of getting out of bed first. Instead, Sam leaned in against Dean's side and slid a hand into Dean's right front jean pocket. Dean's hand locked around his wrist like a vise.

"Something I can help you with, Sam?"

"Just the usual," Sam answered, suddenly almost breathless. The pocket didn't have what he wanted. Sam tried to twist his wrist free, but Dean only tightened his grip. Sam hissed in annoyance. He was willing finally, and more than ready, and if Dean would just let go--  

"Talking first, bleeding later," Dean said firmly. He loosened his fingers enough that Sam was able to wrench free and flop back down beside him with a frustrated huff.

"What the hell could you possible want to talk about _now_?"

"You really didn't know anyone was in the room with you, did you?"

"I was sleeping, Dean! And you make as much noise as my shadow when you want to."

"That doesn't really answer my question."

" _No_ ," Sam spaced the words out slowly between clenched teeth. "I didn't know anyone else was in the room."

"Why not?" Dean asked simply.

Sam started to snap an answer back, but then paused, Dean's question resonating in his mind and distracting him momentarily from other… interests. Why _hadn't_ he known Dean was in the room, that _someone_ was in the room? The press of another mind was usually as obvious to his psychic senses as a person standing in front of him was to his eyes. Even when he hadn't had conscious knowledge of his abilities, he'd always had that subconscious warning. No matter how comfortable he was with Dean, he shouldn't have missed that another person was in the motel room with him. Especially not one lying just inches away on the mattress.

Earlier words stirred uncomfortably in the back of Sam's mind. Accusations of falling asleep between words, lying comatose through things he should have _never_ been able to sleep though. Losing track of days. Sam rubbed at the middle of his forehead, where the low grade headache that never seemed to be very far away anymore was making itself felt. A persistent headache, and constant thrum of… tension? Anxiety? Like he was perpetually waiting for something. Standing on the edge of a cliff. He'd been chalking it up to the stress of the quest-to-nowhere and the relentless shadow it perpetually cast, but… while Sam could recall plenty of stressful and bad times over the past couple of years since he'd agreed to take the quest on, he didn't remember it eating at him constantly like it seemed to be lately.

Sam stared up at the shadowed ceiling, feeling really awake for the first time in days. "I think… maybe you're right. Maybe something is wrong with me."

Dean let out a deep breath beside him. It sounded like relief. "Well, they say admitting it is the first step."

Sam restrained the desire to smack him. "Missouri looked me over pretty thoroughly when I was at her house barely two months ago and she didn't seem to think there was anything wrong. You've told me you didn't see anything either. If it was a spell--"

"If it was a spell, I would have been able to pick it up and burn it off. What I said when I looked you over was that I didn't see anything _wrong_ , and I still don't. But I've got a theory."

"A theory," Sam repeated.

"It came to me in a bar," Dean said.

Sam felt his headache grow worse and draped one arm over his eyes. "I'm listening."

"After I left here, I stopped back by that bar to see if anyone else wanted a game--"

"Any takers?"

"No," Dean snorted. "They only _look_ stupid around here. I tried to call you while I was there."

"Why?" Sam glanced over at him.

Dean gave a half-hearted shrug. "Irritation should be a mutual thing. I figured you'd be asleep."

Sam gave him a _look_ while he fumbled blindly at the nightstand until his hand landed on his phone. A glance at the screen showed no missed calls. "It didn't go through."

"Yes," Dean said patiently. "That was the _tried_ part. I left the wifi on from that roach trap we stayed in last night. It was dead."

"The bar?"

"The _phone_ , Sam. Are you actually awake over there?" Dean added, suspiciously.

"What does this have to do with something being wrong with me?" Sam asked, impatience lacing his voice.

"When was the last time you had one of your psychic meltdowns? I'm not talking about whatever weird impulses you have, though maybe I _should_ be since even that seems to be on the blink lately, but I mean an actual full-blown vision. Or a visitation from your special little friend."

" _Your_ special little friend," Sam said absently as he thought back. "I'm just the intermediary. And I... haven't seen the angel since we blasted open the crypt. That's not the kind of thing I would have forgotten to mention. As for visions... That car accident in Pennsylvania a few months ago? A few weeks before we ended up at Bobby's."

"Pennsylvania."

"I think so," Sam said. "Why is that significant?"

"That's a long way back, don't you think?"

Sam shrugged. "They come when they want to, Dean. I just leave the door open."

"Right, but it's been months."

"What do you want from me, Dean? So it's been months. I went most of my life without seeing things in my head.  And it's not like they were being terribly helpful before that either. I've got radio free-whatever in my mind now, it's not all-demonic bullshit all-the-time. Sometimes I get something useful, sometimes… not so much."

"Do you remember what else happened in Pennsylvania?" Dean pressed.

"No?"

"You don't remember freaking out in the motel about needing some space and fucking the curse up?"

"First of all, the curse was already fucked up. It was one thing when it just kind of ebbed and flowed around and we had to actively reach for each other, and something else when you were _always in my head_. I couldn't even think, Dean. I just… I just _couldn't_ , okay? So, yeah, I screwed it up more and things sucked for awhile, and then we spent some quality time with Bobby and now everything is sunshine and roses again."

"And as touching as your recounting is, you're missing my point."

"What's that?"

"Pennsylvania is when I started putting up the barriers."

"Because mine suck. So what?"

"Mine don't," Dean said flatly.

Sam thought about it. "You think the barriers are what are causing this?"

"Stopping things from reaching you? Yeah. Maybe. That's what a barrier _is_."

"You were supposed to put up barriers to stop us from bleeding all over each other, not stop angels and whatever the World wants to tell me from getting in!"

"It's not a precise science, Sam. The link we have is pretty broad, you told me to wall it up. So I did. Maybe a few other things got walled up too.  You think I've got some advanced degree in fucking around with metaphysical engineering? Where do you think I would have mastered this kind of crap?"

"I don't know, Dean! Hell?" Sam snapped.

Dean rolled his eyes. "What I mastered in Hell didn't really revolve around stopping you from getting your delicate feelings hurt." He cut Sam off before Sam could snarl a reply. "Let me ask you a different question. How long has it been since you've made any progress on getting a grip with your psychic whatever? That's also been awhile, right? Maybe the radio's jammed."

"I can't believe Missouri wouldn't have seen something like that."

Dean shrugged. "She said it herself, no one's ever really dealt with something like me. She sees there's entropy shot all through your aura, but seeing that it's there and seeing what it's doing are two different things."

"What does any of this have to do with your cell phone and my being sick, or whatever?"

"What happens when your cell phone keeps looking for a signal it can't reach?" Dean asked simply.

Sam's eyes widened.

"You've been psychic your whole life. Always plugged in, even if it wasn't that active until you grew up. Even if you didn't know it, you've been tuned into cosmic FM since birth. How do you turn off something you never consciously turned on?" He elbowed Sam gently until Sam met his eyes. "I think the barricades are walling you off from more than just me. I think you're burning the candle at both ends trying to reach through them instinctively, and I'm not sure I can make them any narrower and still have them do what you want. Even if it's possible, I just don't have the skill, Sam."

Sam licked dry lips. "This is just a guess."

"Yeah. But I think it's a good one. And it's easy to check."

"How?"

"You know how," Dean said impatiently. "You let me take them down for awhile and we just...  see what happens."

Sam wavered, wracked with indecision.

"It's the only thing that's changed, Sam," Dean prodded. "And the thicker I've made them, the more screwed up and weird you've gotten. In Pennsylvania, there was just a few and we didn't notice anything odd, and then there were a few more and you still seemed mostly fine. Then there was that whole cluster fuck at Bobby's, where we could still touch each other, but they were already so thick that even with permission it was like reaching through molasses. And since then, every time you feel _anything_ from me you flip out and demand that I shore them up more. I get that you want to be alone in your head, really I do. But there's got to be a line, and that line is wherever it starts messing with this quest or your health."

"So maybe just take a few down to see."

"Or maybe just take them all down," Dean said firmly. "The visions stopped when the first one went up."

Sam crossed his arms tightly over his chest. "I'd like to revisit my earlier question about how exactly you were planning to conduct this little adventure if I _hadn't_ agreed to come along and play tour guide?"

"So far you haven't done as much guiding as you have bitching. And I told you, I didn't have a plan. Something would have come up," Dean said casually.

"Something usually does," Sam said, resigned. "Fine. Do whatever you want. But if this doesn't work, you have to put them all back up, okay?"

"We're probably not going to know if it's working or not immediately, Sam."

"I know that, just… whenever. And in the meantime, stay out of my head." He could almost _hear_ Dean rolling his eyes in the dark.

"Right." Dean drummed his fingers absently on Sam's thigh where it was covered by the blanket for a moment, then stilled. "Can you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Sam grumbled, jerking his leg out from under Dean's hand. He wanted other things from Dean too badly to tolerate a casual touch, even when it wasn't on bare skin. Not if Dean wasn't going to follow through on the teasing. Which Dean almost certainly knew.

"Yeah, that's another one of the reasons I think you have a problem. I mean, it's _possible_ you were this bitchy before and I just didn't notice for some reason…"

"My head hurts, and it's after three a.m. now. Is there any reason I have to stay awake for this?" Sam demanded.

"For this? No. For what we're doing next, probably. I'm still unraveling the stupid barriers though, give me a minute or two."

Sam shifted, restless with impatience until Dean squirmed beside him on the bed for a moment, then pressed something into Sam's hand. It was the pocket knife he'd been digging for in Dean's jeans before. Sam's breath caught despite himself and his fingers closed over the folded blade.

"We could do this first," Sam suggested hopefully. He felt almost lightheaded with the knife in his hand. A tangible promise that at least one of the problems in his life would be sorted out soon, however temporarily. He would care a lot less about what Dean was doing in his mind after the well of demonic power was replenished and eased the awful, yawning ache of emptiness at his core. Even the room felt lighter around him at the thought, as if it was bigger than it had been a few minutes ago, expanding into impossible dimensions of openness. The headache that had nagged at him on and off for weeks receded like a steady tide pulling from the beach and left in its place almost… euphoria.

Sparks danced like fireflies in the dim shadows of the room, flares of red and gold and white. Sam sat up and reached to touch one, Dean's knife falling almost unnoticed from suddenly nerveless fingers as the blankets pooled down to his waist. He had a heartbeat for the cold realization of what was happening to sink in before the tide came rushing back, sparks coalesced into images and sounds, and he was buried under a crashing sea of vision. With his natural sight, Sam could still make out the familiar environment of the motel room, but it was layered together with the images in his mind until it was impossible to distinguish from one another. He was paralyzed by the onslaught, unable to sort out what he was taking in.

"Rufus is going to call," Sam heard his own voice as if from the other end of a long tunnel. Dean's hand was on his shoulder, hot as a branding iron through the thin cotton of Sam's t-shirt. It was the only thing stopping Sam from listing off the bed. He had no sense of balance, trapped in a haze of paths and possibilities that didn't touch the reality he was physically connected to.

"Sam?" Dean asked sharply.

"Rufus is going to call," Sam repeated. He felt Dean grab his chin and angle his face up, was hazily aware of his brother's green eyes boring into his own, searching for… something.

"Sam, are you with me?"

When Sam didn't reply, Dean swore and let go, shifting so his back was against the headboard and he could pull Sam in to lean against his chest. Sam went boneless as a rag doll. He could feel Dean's heart beating under his cheek and Dean's arms wrapped around him, anchors in the psychic storm that was causing his mind to seize up. Sam let his eyes fall gratefully shut. It did nothing to stop the nauseating shift of colors and light assaulting his senses, but closing out some of the other stimulus helped a little bit.

From far away Dean's voice echoed through the chaos. "Why is Rufus going to call?"

Sam wanted to laugh, he had no idea. He almost never did, not until whatever it was had already come to pass. His visions worked _great_ in hindsight.  

Sam thought he could still hear his own voice, but the words were indistinguishable now. The world was narrowing down, light burning in from the edges of his vision until it obliterated everything else and reality fell completely away. His awareness of Dean was the last thing to fade, but soon even that was gone. Sam was surrounded all on sides, floating in a sea of shining radiance; harsh and… welcoming. He felt stripped-down and exposed, but strangely unconcerned as the light seeped in through the pores of his skin and ferreted out every thought, every memory.

He felt utterly accepted and totally at peace, embraced in his entirety in a way that was unlike anything he could have imagined before. He reached out, but there was nothing to touch, just a scintillating brilliance that seemed to echo and rebound forever, expanding into an infinite space that Sam felt he could almost grasp.

" _Sam_."

A shadow passed over him, a momentary flicker in the perfect light that enveloped him. Sam didn't know how long it had been, minutes or years, but the shadow disturbed him.

" _Sam. Where are you?_ "

He knew that voice, it was an important voice. Not… Dean. Sam tried to remember who it was, but the light was distracting, burning in his eyes, scattering his thoughts. He frowned and tried to struggle against it for the first time, trying to _think_ , but it was like swimming in warm honey. Sweet, and smothering, and pulling him back down at every pause for breath. Hard to remember why he was struggling in the first place.

" _Sam_." Harsher now, the voice was edged with concern. Sam felt the first flicker of his own concern, but it was hard to hold onto it. The light was changing, welcoming comfort suddenly twisting around him, tightening into a snare. It dimmed again as the shadow grew stronger and a cool breeze swept around him like an offered hand. Sam grabbed hold and the light went out, as if extinguished by the rising column of icy air and darkness.

When Sam could see again he was facing a neat row of cottage-style shops fronted by a wide sidewalk. A narrow street separated the shops from the recently mowed grass at his feet and the air was thick with humidity. The hard slats of the weathered park bench beneath him were a welcome point of physical contact, but Sam half expected the world to spin away at any minute. When it didn't, he slowly relaxed. The park might not be real, but at least it was familiar.

The park wasn't the only familiar thing, on the other end of the bench an equally familiar figure was sitting. The hair was just as vibrantly red and the skin as marble pale, but this time the dark green band shirt and worn denim had been traded in for some tattered painter shorts and an ivory t-shirt with the Wonderbread logo splayed across the front. The whole picture made it look unreal against the otherwise normal backdrop of the world around them. Easy, then, for Sam to remember that what he was dealing with wasn't human. Though the angel had never tried to pretend otherwise with him.

"What was that?" Sam asked.

The angel shrugged noncommittally. "You should be careful where you let your mind wander, Sam. You have a considerable gift, and not all of the places you can reach are places you are safe."

"Being safe anywhere would be a novelty at this point," Sam said, resigned, "but I am glad to see you again."

"Because you were concerned for my well being?" It raised a thin, skeptical eyebrow the same unnatural scarlet of its hair.

It was Sam's turn to shrug. "It's been awhile."

"Yes. You've been hard to reach." The tone was completely neutral, but Sam couldn't help feeling the sting of censure anyways.

"I know." Sam sighed.  "I mean… I didn't know. Neither of us understood how wide the effect would be." Had obviously been, since not even five minutes after dissolving the barriers he'd been flattened by a barrage of vision and then thrown into a meeting with an angel of Hell. Dean being right was going to make him especially hard to live with for awhile.

"What did you do?" the angel asked.

Sam squirmed internally, not thrilled with confessing his mistake. Thinking of it as _their_ mistake made it marginally better. After all, it hadn't been his barriers gumming up the works. "This link Dean and I have, I asked him to kind of build some walls so we weren't bleeding all over each other like we have been. I guess they were a little… much," he finished lamely.

"You should be careful with things like that."

"No kidding." Sam's voice was dry as desert air.

The angel smiled thinly. "The recent inconvenience isn't the only potential problem you face by walling up the connection you share. You risk aspects of your brother fading as well. To greater or lesser effect, of course."

Sam's stomach twisted into a hard knot. "What do you mean? I though… you know, Dean did the demon thing with Entropy and in exchange he's still _Dean_ in this world. That was the deal, right?"

"We agreed to retain and return to him, or at least make available to him, the traits and memories of his human life. But he is still, at his core, what he has become. Wearing the mask doesn't change what he is underneath."

"I understand that," Sam said tightly. It was a lesson that had been harsh to learn and harder to accept, but he had stood with Dean in the hollowing void, and felt Dean's joy in it. Not _Dean_ truly, not there, but still his brother in ways that went deeper than names and the waking world. Sam didn't like it, but he understood it. As much as anyone human could.

"Then also understand that the way he presents himself to the world now, and the way he would if he was without you, are not the same thing. Much of how he portrays himself is based on the subtleties of your influence. It is unlikely the effect would appear so seamless if there was not an open channel running deep between you."

Sam sat up, brow furrowed. "So you're saying that it's all an act? That Dean being _Dean_ is some kind of role he's playing for -- why?"

"A façade, but not an act," the angel replied patiently. "He _is_ Dean, as much as is possible. He has all the pieces of his former self, but the blueprint of how those pieces worked together comes more from you than from something intrinsic to him." The angel took a long sip of the ever present Slurpee and watched Sam struggle with the idea for a moment. "Two people with identical space and materials will still create two distinct rooms. To recreate himself perfectly, Dean's needs the template of your impressions as well as his own."

Sam thought about the last few months. About annoyances that really shouldn't have been, and the odd feeling of disconnection. About barriers wide and strong enough to sever him from the psychic plane and hold angelic visitors at bay. "Does he know?"

"He thinks of himself as your brother, Sam. I'm sure he's aware that he takes some cues from you, but it's not something that can be quantified and examined. Our wards keep him from the greater part of what he is now, and anchor him in your reality with his memories intact. But the finishing touches…" It waved a hand lazily in Sam's direction.

Sam remembered Dean when he had first returned. Remembered months of isolation and fear, watching a stranger with his brother's face. Remembered realizing slowly that the stranger wasn't, not really. Accepting that Dean was _Dean_ , and not just another monster with an agenda of pain. With this new information…. Maybe he hadn't just been irrationally opposed to the idea that Dean had come back. Maybe Dean _had_ changed during the long months to be more of what Sam remembered, and less of what he feared.

Sam didn't doubt Dean's honesty -- he'd been with Dean in places that brooked no deception, where no half-truth or pretty words could change what was revealed.

Dean's stability was more debatable.

Sam felt ill thinking of how close they had come to severing the bond. He _had_ damaged it, and more than once. But Dean had still always been the same. That trying to get some space in his own mind might have choked off enough of whatever was between them to cause actual personality changes in Dean was an unpleasant thought. It was also an unusual topic of discussion for the Entropic Angel, who tended to be more concise in vaguely helpful ways than given to long rambling discussions on topics not directly related to its agenda. Sam gave it a suspicious look.

"So is this why we're having this meeting? A graduate course in demon psychology 101, with helpful tips and refreshments?" Overhead a stiff breeze stirred through the trees and sent a few yellowish leaves drifting down to dot the grass around them.

"I thought we were just exchanging pleasantries. 'Chit-chat,' I believe you humans call it."

Sam crossed his arms and leaned back against the bench. It creaked ominously as his weight shifted. "Yeah, we usually try to limit that to the weather."

"Ah. It seems pointless to discuss something that is mutually observable."

"Sunny with a chance of leaves," Sam agreed. "Anything else?"

"Are you in a hurry to be somewhere?" it asked archly.

"I'm in a hurry to find out what you actually wanted to see me about," Sam said, impatience edging his voice. There had been a time in his life where he would have tripped all over his own feet in an effort to be polite and respectful of an _angel_. It was amazing what time could change. "You don't usually make drop-ins just to shoot the breeze and criticize my manners."

"Maybe I've missed your company."

"You should have plenty of company where you are. We just send a whole pack of annoyances back to the Pit to stew in their own juices for a century."

"The Rendering," the angel said, dismissively. "Though I admit Lilith's frustrated howls add a certain ambiance to the place that we had been missing since she slipped her leash." The smile was a momentary slash of malicious satisfaction. Sam reminded himself firmly that this angel was an ally he _wanted_ to help, freeing the Entropic Angels was a good thing, and that, as Dean said, Hell was what you made of it. "You can't think you're safe from her though," the angel added offhandedly, snapping Sam back to sharp focus, "or depend on her staying put for any specific length of time."

"Why not?" Sam demanded. "It's supposed to take her and the other major players caught in the blast a full century to power back up to escape."

"That's assuming no one is generous about sharing themselves with her. Which, granted, would usually be a good assumption, Hell not being a place where a lot of the inhabitants go in for helpfulness and mutual aid. But Lilith is special. Many try to curry Lucifer's favor by aiding his shining star as she goes about her tasks. When their master returns, they wish to greet him with proof of their loyalty and sacrifice on his behalf," it added distastefully. "Even so, recovering enough power to pull herself free should take her some time. However, though she still lacks technical freedom, she has legions of foot soldiers able to move in your world that have not been hampered at all."

"We can handle a few garden variety demons."

"Until you can't."

"Is _this_ what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No. I simply wanted to warn you that certain things have started to shift again in the multiverse. Portents and possibilities, great matters of cause and change."

"Is that supposed to be some kind of helpful clue?" Sam demanded.

"The clues don't come from me, Samuel. I am not the architect of this masterpiece, and I don't know where the lines are drawn. The World seeks balance, and you and your kind are children of her nature. She has no patience or sympathy with the plights of me and mine, we are wholly apart from her… grandiosity. She tolerates us, and can be coaxed into cooperation when her interests are involved, but she is the gem in my Father's crown, and she generally prefers that we keep our proverbial hands to ourselves. She will tell you what you need to know, if you know how to listen in the quiet places."

"I picked up on the clues last time well enough."

"Yes," the angel agreed solemnly. "So I have great hope for this endeavor as well."

"What's changed?" Sam asked abruptly.

"That's a nonspecific question," it observed.

"What's changed that _now_ you want to talk to me," Sam clarified. "Why are things suddenly starting to happen? It's been more than two years since we moved the Cage door, what makes now a better time than then?"

"Moving the door, as you say, took the combined efforts of angels of Entropy and Creation, an Entropic demon, hundreds of human lives, thousands of years of prophecy, one of the most powerful human psychics alive, and the World itself -- and that was just moving a door. The prison of one rebellious angel. Did you think unraveling the magic that traps half of the Host in the bowels of the Pit would be the work of an afternoon?"

Put that way…. A heavy weight of resignation settled over Sam. He wasn't even sure he should be arguing its estimations of his ability, since he was having an afternoon chat with a biblical creature from another Plane of existence. "How are we supposed to do this again?"

"The same way you accomplish any great feat of this nature. One step at a time."

"Thanks. That's… very unhelpful of you."

A cloud passed over the sun and the balmy air took on a cool note for a moment. It reminded Sam of the embracing warmth of earlier. Of light that burned brighter than the sun. He shuddered, and didn't know why.

The angels face was very serious when Sam met its eyes. "This path is untraveled and I know little of the road. The beginning and the end alone are set, but the tools you will need and the knowledge to use them exists. _Must_ exist. Nature itself abhors absolutes. There is nothing that is done that cannot be undone, even if it is done by my Father. Much less something done by any lesser being."

"No absolutes," Sam echoed. The ghost of a smile brushed his lips. "I should ask you the same thing I asked Dean. What was the plan if I _didn't_ agree to help out with this?"

"There was little chance of that if Dean's original goal was accomplished."

"So this was just one big calculated risk?" Sam asked, incredulously.

"As, ultimately, are all such ventures." The angel shrugged gracefully and turned its attention back to its drink.

Sam fumed on the bench for a few minutes but the angel said nothing else. The strangeness of just _sitting_ there together seeped through Sam's irritation. "If you can't help me, and don't have anything else to say… why am I still here?"

"The road is that way," it pointed with its free hand to the narrow strip of asphalt that faded into a distance Sam had never explored. "Don't think that I am keeping you here."

Sam jumped to his feet, he shot the angel an annoyed look and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

"Sam?" the angel called before he could get more than a couple of feet away. "You must be very careful about things now. Not all of your enemies were born in Hell."

 

** Chapter Five **

I recognize the walls inside  
I recognize them all  
I've paced between them  
Chasing demons down until they fall  
In fitful sleep, enough to keep their strength  
Enough to crawl into my head  
With tangled threads, they riddle me to solve  
                                                ~I May Know The Word, Natalie Merchant

Sam came back to the world feeling like every cell of his body was on fire, the pain in his head almost blacking out his ability to see even in the shadowy room. Thankfully, he didn't need his eyes to go looking for what he wanted, Dean's bare flesh was already there, hot and smooth under his desperately seeking hands. Dean's fingers twisted roughly in his hair, a different note of pain that guided Sam's head down to press his mouth to where Dean's skin tasted like silver and iron, like power that burned down his nerve ending, shattering light bulbs in the vaults of his mind and filling up the places that were so achingly empty. It drove the agony back until it was just a dull burn, and eventually even that began to fade into another sort of heat. Another fire that ate at his sanity and self-control.

Sam turned his head away when one blaze finally eclipsed the other, face pressed to Dean's chest while he struggled to get air into lungs that felt deprived. The wound was already gone, wiped away almost with the speed of thought. Dean shifted until he could nuzzle at Sam's mouth, licking away the traces of blood before he ducked down to close his teeth over the muscle that joined Sam's neck and shoulder.

Sam shuddered and gasped. "Good," he managed. "I'm good, just--" _Touch me_ , he wanted to beg, but didn't have to, because Dean's warm, competent hands were already skimming up under Sam's t-shirt and pulling it over his head. Sam fell back on the bed and dragged Dean down over him. He tried to help get Dean's shirt off, but couldn't manage to coordinate himself enough to not end up making things more difficult. He was about to start just trying to rip the shirt off Dean, when Dean managed to grab both of his wrists in one hand and pin them firmly to the bed over Sam's head. Sam pulled wildly against the hold, but there was nothing human about the strength Dean was using. Dean had also stopped moving, which was a worse crime. Sam wanted to scream in frustration.

It slowly sank in through his struggles that Dean was trying to get his attention, to _talk_ to him. Something changed in his headspace and Dean's words suddenly made sense even over the deafening pound of his own heart.

"Better?" Dean asked roughly.

"Not really," Sam panted. He gave his wrists another experimental twist, but Dean's grip only tightened until Sam thought he felt bones grind together.

"I thought you were going to black out on me, I didn't want that this time."

"Okay," Sam managed to get out, not understanding why they were still _talking_ when they could be _doing other things_.

Dean lowered his head and raked his teeth over the side of Sam's throat. It wasn't much, but it was better than space between them and Sam turned his head, inviting more of whatever he could get.

"I was saying," Dean murmured between trailing bites, "that if you can hold your hands here for a minute, I can get us both naked faster than if I have to fight you to do it. You can do that, right? Keep your hands over your head and out of my way? Just for a minute?" Sam nodded frantically. Naked, faster… none of the other words really sank in that far, but Dean's loosened his grip and Sam obediently grabbed hold of the edge of the mattress. His reward was Dean immediately sliding down the bed, trailing his mouth over Sam's fever hot skin as he did. Sam was barely aware of Dean's hands at his waist, it just seemed to him that in the space between one minute and the next, their clothes evaporated and _finally_ he had Dean's naked flesh pressed all along the length of his body.

An improvement, but not enough to satisfy the desperate hunger that lived in Sam's skin. Dean kneed Sam's thighs apart and Sam offered no resistance, busy trying to touch as much of Dean as he could, and unconcerned with what Dean was doing as long as it didn't involve moving away. Time didn't mean anything to Sam during these exchanges, the worse his need drove him, the less connection he had to any reality outside of Dean. Sam flinched back from the unexpected chill of lube being carefully applied, but then minutes or hours passed with only a hazy consciousness of anything but the mattress under his back and the places where Dean's skin strained against his own, teasing and encouraging until Sam could only anticipate the burning stretch of Dean finally, _finally_ , sinking in. Sweat slicked their bodies where they touched, easing the friction of Dean's increasingly forceful movements as he pushed Sam towards that bright, sharp edge until everything was finally too much and he tumbled over, taking Dean with him in a wash of euphoric sensation and then peace.   

  
~~~~~

 

"What does that mean?" Dean mused aloud sometime later. Sam lay curled up against him, sweat drying on his skin where it was exposed to the air. Moving, even to get clean, was still too much effort. He'd tried, but was too dizzy to make it much more than sitting on the edge of the bed, so he'd given up and flopped back down. The buzzing in his head usually calmed down in a few minutes, soon enough to shower then. Sam had spent the time filling Dean in on the fruitless conversation with the angel.

"Which part?" Sam asked.

"About not all of your enemies being born in Hell. Kind of sounds like it's got a specific set in mind."

"Yeah. I assumed it was talking about the other angels. They've interfered before."

"They've also been pretty helpful."

"Castiel has, the others I've run into tried to kill me."

Dean spread his arms out over the pillows. "Bad apples in every bunch. And we're doing something right if angels keep trying to kill you and you're still here."

Sam sighed and rolled over so he could see Dean's face. "It doesn't make any sense that it would be trying to warn me about the angels. The name-calling and attempted murder was really all the warning I needed."

"Humans maybe?" Dean considered. "Bobby's not said anything, but there's got to be a lot of people out there who would love a chance to take a swing at us. We didn't exactly advertise our involvement with the crap that's been going on the last few years, but we didn't really go out of our way to keep it a secret either. Bobby knows, probably a few of his buddies. Rufus? Whoever helped you with your house. God knows who Gordon and his assorted fuck-ups blabbed too. It's not impossible that some of them might be gunning for us."

"You think an angel of Hell made an appearance in my head to warn me about some human hunters?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows how they think? Maybe it just missed you."

Sam sat up again and frowned. "So showing up to tell me that humans might be stalking our back trail is a maybe kind of thing, but you think showing up just because it _missed_ me is a likely alternative?"

"Maybe you made an impression."

" _Maybe_ you should have told me that some of your… you-ness, was a side effect of the curse bleeding things between us," Sam said. He hit Dean with a pillow. It was not a friendly gesture.

Dean batted the pillow away and stretched against the rumpled sheets. "It's not a big deal, Sam. So what? You're, you know, the spackle on my drywall."

"First of all," Sam said levelly, "shut up. Second of all, it might have been nice to know this before, back when we were talking about breaking this thing!"

"There were more important things to consider in that decision than whatever little cracks and edges might be a little more visible if we went ahead and just broke it. You know, like blood, sex, and a power exchange. This thing's not such a big deal, Sam."

"It is to me!"

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Which part exactly? That I may lean on you a little to keep the dream alive? Or the reminder that your brother died, and I'm all you got back?"

A tense silence filled the space between them. "That's not fair," Sam said quietly after a long moment.

Dean looked away. "No, you didn't deserve that."

The capitulation was unusual, but genuine. Unease stirred in the back of Sam's mind, and it wasn't his. He reached out and brushed his knuckles over the hypnotic pattern of the tattoo on Dean's hip, pins and needles tingling in his skin where they touched. It had always had that effect on Sam, no matter whose body it adorned. He felt some of the tension uncurl a little between them. "I can barely feel you."

"What part of me were you having trouble feeling, exactly?" Dean's raised an eyebrow, inviting Sam's retort.

Sam ignored the invitation. "I'm talking about the link, without the barriers," he said instead. "I thought it would be this overwhelming rush and I'd have to fight just to keep my sanity above water."

"It was never really like that, Sam." Now it was Dean that sounded tired, and even that faint flavor of his emotions receded in Sam's mind until he was aware only of himself.

"No," Sam agreed, feeling an odd sense of loss, "but almost, and it felt like it could be. Like it _would_ be, eventually. This is… quieter. Almost like how it started." He hesitated. "We don't experience everything the same way."

Dean snorted a laugh. "Well, that's for damn sure." Sam scowled and glanced towards the bathroom, thinking a shower might finally be on the agenda. And then sleep. Merciful, peaceful, sleep. Maybe even restful, for what might be the first time in half a year. Dean took advantage of his distraction to run a finger up Sam's spine. Sam stiffened and scooted out of reach. He swung his feet down to floor and stifled a yawn.

"So touchy, Sam." Dean rolled to his elbow. "You didn't mind it ten minutes ago."

"That was then, this is now."

"The story of our lives."

Sam stood up and was pleased when the room stayed nice and steady. He made the effort to give Dean a disdainful look, which made Dean grin, then rummaged in his duffle bag for his shampoo.

"I'll do what I can, you know," Dean made a swirly motion towards his head, "to keep things separate. Before when things were getting muddled, it was Pennsylvania. After… what happened, happened. We never really got a chance to try it by itself again after you sorted things out at Bobby's. It might be okay now."

"It wasn't okay _before_ Pennsylvania," Sam said pointedly. "Which is what led to all this crap in the first place."

"No, but this feels almost like after we kicked Lilith's ass and you created it the first time. You can live with that, can't you? A little give, a little take…" Dean's voice trailed off hopefully and Sam managed a smile. He could live with that. Easier than he could live with Dean unraveling in the backdrop of his mind again. Easier than he could live with reaching for his brother and finding only the demon again.

Easier than being alone.

"I'm not getting back in that bed," Sam said instead of answering the question. He knew Dean could read his answer in the bond twisting between them, alive now like it hadn't been for years, since right after Ilchester. Sam made no effort to withdraw from it. Just knowing he could was good enough for now.

"That's why we have two," Dean gestured grandly to the still perfectly made bed by the wall.

Sam's smile was more genuine now. He could _feel_ Dean's hopefulness and the sincerity of his intentions. Neither hopefulness nor sincerity of intent would last past anything Dean saw as a necessary evil, regardless of how Sam felt. Dean had always been crystal clear that few things would be allowed to stand between him and whatever was expedient towards his goals, but it was a place to start.

  
~~~~~

 

"So, why are we still in town?" Sam asked late the next morning. It was almost noon and they had been lingering in the downtown diner for over an hour. 

Dean glanced at him over the top of a newspaper. "You have some better place to be?"

"Theoretically, yeah."

Dean shrugged. "Well, when you figure out your theoretical better place, let me know and we'll head out. But since we're here, see if you can grab the waitress. I need more bacon. And another of those little roll things."

Sam made no effort to locate their server. He leaned in and lowered his voice. "Okay, what gives with you today? We go through towns like most people change channels. What's so special about this place that you've decided to put down roots?"

Dean didn't bother looked up this time. "It's one day, Sam. We've stayed in the same place more than twenty-four hours before. If you think hard, I'm sure you can even recall a few times."

"Why now?" Sam pressed.

Dean peeled out a section of the paper and tossed it across the table to Sam. "Why don't you try dwelling on something else? Like the economy, or the stock market, or what's eating all the wildlife over in Big Stone Gap?"

Sam frowned and picked the paper up. "Something's eating all the park animals?" He found the article and skimmed it. "Dean, it says they found three deer carcasses minus their skin and plus a few bullet holes. Noticeably missing are words like 'all,' 'eaten,' or 'mysterious.'" He tossed the paper back down. "This isn't a hunt, it's someone who wanted to re-upholster their man-cave."

"See? I knew you could find something else to think about if you just put your mind to it."

"Dean," Sam hissed in exasperation.

Dean gave him an annoyed look. "What do you want from me, Sam? We unclogged the pipe so, you know, hopefully something useful will come through it at some point. But all that's washed out so far is a really unhelpful conversation and whatever mess you saw right before you fell over."

"And Rufus is going to call," Sam added. They'd tried calling Rufus themselves, but wherever he was, none of the calls had gone through.

"Right." Dean rolled his eyes. "And Rufus is going to call. We don't know why, or where he is, or why the hell he can't pick up his phone for _us_ , but somewhere, somehow, Rufus is going to call. You didn't even say he was going to call us, you know. Maybe he's going to call his mom and she's just such a karmically awesome soul that the whatever that whispers to you got overexcited and put it out on broadcast." 

The waitress walked by and Dean waved her down. Sam sat impatiently while Dean flirted through his order before finally sending her on her way.

"I really don't think I'm having visions of Rufus calling his mother, Dean," Sam said as soon as she was gone. "There was more to it, it's just not clear yet."

Dean crunched through his last strip of bacon from his first plate. "I thought clarity was what you were getting when you grabbed your head and started swearing in the car on the way over here."

"There was too much yesterday to sort out." Sam gave his waffle a dispirited poke. "Like all the backlog we've been missing out on the last few months just flooded in all at once. What I saw in the car... I think it was just part of it untangling. It wasn't exactly helpful either though. Some kind of picture, part of a picture, something. It was blurry." Sam closed his eyes, trying to bring the vision back into focus, but the effort just made his head ache and he reluctantly gave up. 

"Well, if it's important, we'll trip over it sooner or later," Dean said dismissively.

"In this diner?" Sam asked pointedly.

Dean laid the newspaper down and pinned Sam with a look. "It's one extra day, Sam. You'd think I was shopping for a house. Since when are you the one all crazed to hit the road? I thought you'd like sleeping in the same bed two nights in a row for a change."

"Yeah, Dean, it's great. I'm loving every second."

"I can tell," Dean said in the exact same time. "Just where is it that you think we should go again?"

Sam slumped back in the bench. "I don't know. Somewhere. Just... whatever we're looking for, it's not here." 

"You sure of that?" Dean raised an eyebrow.

Sam didn't even hesitate. "Yes."

"Okay then."

"We're going to leave?"

"Seems a shame, I already paid for the second night."

"Dean!"

"Is one day going to kill us? Is this some critical time thing where we're going to miss the Great Pumpkin if we cool our jets for a few more hours?"

"Maybe," Sam growled.

"You know that, or you _know_ that?" Dean's lazy interest sharpened in the back of Sam's mind and Sam knew the question wasn't idle. He stifled his irritation and thought about it. He closed his eyes and imagined leaving the diner, climbing into the Impala, hitting the road... that felt right. He wanted to do that. Then he imagined doing the same thing, but not until tomorrow. Another sunset, another sunrise... that also felt right. The same kind of right it had the first time. He wanted to leave, but another day wouldn't make a difference. Probably.

"This doesn't mean anything," Sam said when he opened his eyes again. "It's not strong either way. I could be getting outside help on this, or--"

"Or you just may really hate Pikeville. Which is totally unreasonable, Sam. Did you see the display case this place has when we came in? I think they have like ten different kinds of pie here. How could you not love this town?"

"I'm just saying--"

"That you finally feel like we have some kind of clue, and you want to get back out there and run it down," Dean summarized.

"Right."

"Run it down where, exactly?"

"It doesn't matter _where_ , all I know is it's not _here_. You've dragged me from one place to another on nothing but idle whims for months now, Dean!"

"Yeah," Dean said patiently. "And now I'm waiting for some bacon, and then I'm going to eat pie. Tomorrow's soon enough to head out." He picked the paper up again and flipped it open.

Sam crossed his arms and seriously considered kicking Dean under the table. He wondered if there was something about families that reduced all otherwise competent, adult members to children when forced to spend time together, or if it was just him.

"What are we really doing here?" Sam finally asked when it was obvious Dean planned to continue ignoring him.

"Hanging out, getting brunch, maybe hit the Wal-Mart down the road and pick up some more deodorant."

"That's what we're doing today? Eating and deodorant shopping?"

"Everyone's got to shop for deodorant sometime, Sam."

Sam gave up. "Fine. Let's go shopping."

"And the movies," Dean added as the waitress approached the table with his order. "I can't even remember the last time I was in a theater that wasn't haunted by something."

  
~~~~~

 

A booted foot poked into his side with enough force to count as a kick and startled Sam from a sound sleep. He rubbed at his ribs and glared irritably at his brother, who was slouched unconcerned in a chair by the bedside reading, legs stretched out across the comforter next to Sam. As usual, there was enough sodium light filtering in around the curtains for Sam to make out general shapes, but details were lost to the darkness of the room.

"Phone's ringing," Dean noted helpfully, not bothering to look up from whatever magazine he was reading.

Sam blinked at the ceiling while the tinny strains of Enter Sandman filled the darkness of the motel room.  It didn't sound like his phone, but with Dean's ringtone compulsion it could be hard to say. Little spots of chaos in the freefall of his life. Sam turned his head to see three a.m. blinking on the bedside clock. He wondered why these moments of weirdness couldn't happen in the middle of the day for a change. "Why didn't you answer it?"

"Not my phone," was Dean's maddening reply. He still hadn't bothered so much as glancing up from the text. Sam groaned and rolled over, fishing his jeans off the floor to fumble the cell phone from a pocket. He stared at the display for a moment, trying to clear the cobwebs of sleep from his mind.

"Who is it?" Dean asked, taking more of an interest now that Sam was moving.

"No one I recognize." Sam flopped onto his back again in the rumpled sheets and hit the button. "Hello?" He listened for a long minute. "Uh... yeah, Rufus." Dean shot him a sharp look and Sam made a hasty quiet gesture. "We're interested, sure. No, no, it's fine." Sam listened some more, nodding slowly. "We were just talking about finding a job earlier. I don't even think we're that far away, swinging by's no problem at all. Yeah." Another long pause. "Sure. See you tomorrow then." Sam tossed the phone onto the bed and started pulling on his jeans.

"Nice to know your subscription to radio-free-weirdness is still good. But -- a job? That's what the whole 'Rufus is going to call' thing was about?" Dean asked, skeptical.

"Yeah, I guess." Sam stifled a yawn and bent down to pull his boots on.

"So what is it?" Dean prompted when Sam fell silent, trying to sort out the mystery that was shoelaces at three in the morning.

"Do you remember Joe Selman?"

"Uhhh… whackjob friend of Bobby's?"

"Is that just a guess, or do you actually remember him?"

"That depends on if I'm right or not." Dean hit the light switch, and Sam swore as the sudden brightness hurt his eyes.

"You could warn me next time."

"Sorry, princess, I didn't think you could see in the dark."

"I can see well enough to put my shoes on.

"Why do I care about Selman?"

"I don't know that either of us do." Sam rummaged in the side of his duffle bag. "Have you seen my toothbrush?"

"The AC vents were getting dusty. If we don't care, why bring him up?"

"You used my toothbrush to clean the vents in the Impala?"

"Well, I certainly wasn't going to use _mine_. Consider it your contribution to her general upkeep and well-being. I didn't think you'd want it back afterward."

Sam growled something under his breath and fished Dean's toothbrush out of the side of Dean's duffle bag, then disappeared into the bathroom.

Dean waited until the water shut off. "What about Selman?" he called as he packed up what little had made it out of their bags during the two day stay.

"He bought a house out near Charleston. Something about an auction and the city wanting to demolish it," Sam called back.

"This story's already warming my heart. Why do we care?" Dean asked as Sam reappeared in the doorway and gathered up his toiletries.

"Well, it's haunted. Or possessed. Rufus was a little vague on that part. He wants us to do something about it."

Dean stopped packing. "Let me get this straight. Rufus, who we barely know, calls us up out of the blue to drive out to Charleston to... what? Inspect some new real estate his buddy picked up at a foreclosure sale? Do you remember what happened last time we went poking around some ancient, abandoned property? Does falling through a floor and getting hauled off to the emergency room in the back of a truck with flashing lights and sirens ring any bells for you, Sam?"

"He said it was structurally sound." Sam shrugged, unconcerned.

"Oh, that's great." Dean snorted, but finished zipping things up. "And Rufus got his engineering degree, where again?"

"Cal Tech," Sam answered absently, debating if it was time to steal a new washcloth or not. "He did architecture at Berkeley."

Dean stared at Sam.

Sam felt the weight of his surprise and looked up. "He did most of the planning work on my house. When I still had one. You think I didn't ask him a few questions?"

" _Rufus_?"

"People aren't born hunters." Sam shrugged. "Gotta do something to pay the bills."

"I thought that was why God gave us credit card fraud?"

"Sorry, _most_ people aren't born hunters," Sam said. "Dad had conceptual issues regarding child-raising, that's probably why you're confused. Anyways, Rufus is going to text me Selman's current address and we're supposed to swing by so he can tell us about what's going on at the new place."

"Why can't we just meet at the new place and he can tell us there?"

"I don't know, Dean," Sam said, impatience brushing his voice. "He said something about having to help Selman dig out his house. It wasn't exactly a long conversation. My psychic whatever said Rufus was going to call, which implies to me that the call was pretty damn important. Rufus wants us to meet him at this place and do something about the ghost. My vote is we just do it, and whine about it later."

"I don't know why you think we can't whine about it beforehand too," Dean grumbled. "It's not like there's a whining quota we're going to hit or something, you would have found that threshold decades ago." Dean shouldered his bag and tossed the room key on the bed for the maid to find. "Just -- how the hell does some haunted mansion Rufus found out in South Carolina help up on this quest?"

Sam shrugged and grabbed his own bag from the bed. "Only one way to find out."

 

** Chapter Six **

On the door of one was truth, on the other door was lies  
Which one should I enter thru? I really must decide  
The door of lies had lots of flowers growing round outside  
But looking close I noticed it was crumbling inside  
                                    ~House For Everyone, Traffic

Charleston was as lovely of a city as Sam remembered it being. He hadn't had much call to spend time there in the past, but he'd passed through enough to appreciate the unique blend of old city charm and modern metropolis, with its thriving coastal community and equally thriving historical districts that felt almost like wandering in two different worlds. It was a quirky kind of place, but the people had always seemed friendly and Sam had vaguely thought about it being a nice place to spend a few years practicing law, back when that was something he had seen in his future. Along with a wife, a house, and a picket fence.

He was kind of sad that this trip to the city seemed geared towards avoiding all of the aspects that made it so appealing in the first place.

"You know, Sam, when you said Rufus was helping Selman dig out his house, I envisioned a mudslide, or some kind of tragic accident involving a dump truck full of sand. Not, you know, _this_." Dean waved his hand to take in the entire property with its towering live oaks, wild tangle of bushes, and a dingy mustard-colored doublewide that looked almost delicate against the overwhelming sprawl of the greenery. And the mountains of trash and assorted filthy random pieces of junk that lay haphazardly scattered across what was probably a lawn, when you could see it. Occasionally a piece of something would go sailing out the front door accompanied by sulphurous swearing from an unseen person or persons inside.

Sam tentatively poked at a pile of loose carpet with one booted toe, then flinched back when a cloud of flies swarmed up.

"Yeah, don't do that," Dean suggested.

"Maybe we should--"

"'Help' had better not be the next word out of your mouth."

" _\--Knock,_ " Sam finished, looking for a clear path to the house. "Or something. I'm sure this is the address Rufus gave me."

"We should set it on fire," Dean suggested, giving the place another surveying glance. "Everyone will come out, and we'd be doing them a favor at the same time."

"I thought you liked chaos," Sam retorted, picking his way through the debris towards the front door.

"It's my nose that's offended, not my sense of order."

"Sam!" Rufus walked out of the house with an armload of clothing that he promptly dropped on top of one of the growing piles. He dusted his hands off on his jeans. "I'd offer to shake, but you might catch something."

"Rufus," Sam greeted him, unsure what tone to take. The older hunter had been on hand to witness some of the more unusual happening at Bobby's house during the troubles of the previous years. The fact that he'd called them for help seemed to imply a live and let live attitude about it, but caution was an ingrained habit. "It's been awhile."

"Not really long enough for my taste," Rufus drawled, "but Bobby swears that's not your fault and I needed a hand out here."

"Hi, Rufus," Dean said before Sam could reply.

Rufus gave him a dark look. "Dean. Bobby was less reassuring about you. Try not to break anything."

"Looks like someone's beat me to it around here," Dean said.

Rufus swept his gaze over the yard and scratched at an ear. "Well, that's true enough."

"Is this Joe Selman's house?" Sam asked, trying to keep any judgment out of his voice.

"Yeah, such as it is. But now he's bought the new house and I'm helping him clean this place up to sell."

"As what?" Dean asked. "A landfill?"

"How'd you get involved in this, Rufus?" Sam asked hastily.

"Friendship," Rufus said with disgust. "There's a few of us still around who benefited from Joe's help back in the day. We try to keep the mess in check, take turns swinging by every couple of months and shoveling it out a little. Can't let the man be buried alive by his own poor housekeeping, can I? He doesn't have any family left to speak of, and the one time we talked him into trying one of those assisted living type places, he rigged a crossbow to his apartment door and lectured his neighbors on the importance of a good layer of Valerian around the windows to keep the restless dead from swinging by for a visit. This is less of a headache."

"Valerian keeps the undead away?" Dean looked interested in that tidbit.

"No," Rufus snorted. "He just didn't like his neighbors. Wishful thinking on his part, I think, we haven't had problems with the undead in Charleston for at least twenty years."

"There was a problem with the undead before?" Sam asked.

"There's a lot of reasons people want to forget the 80's." Rufus shrugged. "Not just because of the bad music and big hair."

Sam decided not to pursue that. "So you're shoveling this place out to get it ready--"

"--to bulldoze," Dean cut in helpfully.

"To _sell_ ," Sam shot him a withering look, "and meanwhile Selman's planning to move into this new mansion he bought, which is haunted and you described to me as 'probably not going to fall down soon.'"

Dean's irritation curled into the back of Sam's mind. "You said _structurally sound_ , Sam. Not 'Gone With the Wind.'"

"It's fine," Rufus said firmly. "Just old. Like me. Well, older than me, but still a perfectly sound building. Belonged to some New England capitalist family back in the twenties or something. Changed hands a lot over the years. People were interested in the grand estate, kept it fixed up and cared for -- not recently, but recently enough. They just never seemed to want to live there very long."

Dean and Sam exchanged a look. "Never seemed to want to live there very long?" Sam began.

"Or just never lived very long, period?" Dean finished the thought.

"A little of both," Rufus admitted. "Come on around back and I'll let Joe tell you about it."

  
~~~~~

 

The back yard turned out to be only half as cluttered as the front, but what piles of household items remained were supplemented by enough rusting machinery back in the weeds to give it a more classic junkyard feel. It almost made Sam nostalgic for Bobby's place.  It was also less fragrant than the front yard had been, and Sam was grateful for whatever small favors he could find.

"So, you're John Winchester's kids," Joe Selman greeted them as they came up to him sitting on the back porch steps. He was a hunter from well before Sam's time, and a legend in his own day, but Sam was having trouble seeing it in the frail old man with his snowy white hair and kind blue eyes. "I met him once or twice, you know. Back in the day." He gave them both a thoughtful once over. "I had the idea in my head that you'd be older for some reason," he mused, voice trailing off as if overtaken by a thought.

"Good genes," Dean offered with a firm smile. Sam refrained from commenting at all, not trusting himself to speak on the topic.

"Tell them about the house," Rufus prompted. His prodding broke Selman from whatever trip down memory lane he was wandering off on.

"Right, right, of course," Selman agreed. He fumbled through a stack of papers on the damp concrete beside him until he came up with an old photograph he proudly extended to Sam.

Dean leaned in next to him so he could see it too and gave a low whistle. "Nice place." The photograph was black and white and obviously of some age, but the mansion with its slender columns, graceful balconies, and obsessively neat landscaping didn't need color to clearly convey its stately nature. "It still looks like this?"

"Eh," Selman hedged. "Not exactly like that. She's a little weathered around the edges. Needs some paint, and little carpentry work. New steps, possibly some siding. They said most of the roof looked okay--"

"It's fine," Rufus cut in. "I told you, it's not going to cave in on you."

Selman shot him a distressed look. "Of course she's not going to cave in on you! This house is a lady. She's a perfect example of the classical architecture of the nineteen twenties. They don't build anything like this anymore. I'd take her bare bones over any of this modern disposable crap they keep trying to push on people nowadays. A house should have great character, it should tell a story, there should be--"

"A body count in the double digits?" Dean guessed sardonically. Sam handed the photograph back silently.

"We all have our warts," Selman said with great dignity. He gave the photograph a fond look. "You can't hold something like that against her."

Sam and Dean exchanged a sidelong look. "So, Rufus," Dean drawled. "What exactly are we doing here again?"

"It's that great character the house has." Rufus's smile was all teeth. "It's a little too much _personality_ for what I'm up to handling these days. I've got a heart condition, you know. My doctor told me to avoid murderous spirits and getting thrown through any walls or impaled on anything this year. I was telling Singer about the problem, and he suggested you guys were the perfect people to look into it for me."

"Jody must not have forgiven him yet," Sam muttered.

"That's because he's doing it wrong," Dean said, disgusted. "I told him, skip all the apologies and sad looks and just take her out and get her drunk. Alcohol makes everyone feel chummy." 

"Does Bobby often come to you for relationship advice?" Rufus asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Hey, it works on my current interest." Both Dean and Rufus studiously avoided looking at Sam. Sam ground his teeth and refused to make any comment at all. He had never been sure exactly how much Rufus knew about Dean or the situation between them. He figured the part about them sleeping together wasn't a mystery, since Rufus had been on hand to watch Sam stagger, half dressed and barely conscious, out into a mid-summer snowstorm to meet a long-absent Dean at Bobby's once, but as to what else he knew or had guessed about Dean's nature… Sam was at a loss. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing you could ask a person, much less a hunter. And it didn't change the current situation at all. Sam's visions had led them here; they could only hope there was something in this situation they would recognize as useful.

"What _exactly_ is the problem with the house?" Sam asked, firmly redirecting the conversation back onto productive grounds.

Rufus shrugged, then gave a meaningful glance down at Selman. Selman hesitated for a moment, stroking one finger lovingly over the photograph in his hand, and then told them.

  
~~~~~

 

"So," Dean began an hour later, as they stood on what had once been an elegant walkway and now barely passed muster as a weed-choked ramble of broken concrete, "how much do you think they charged him for this place?"

Sam pulled his sleeve free of a monstrously overgrown holly bush. "Too much."

Dean looked around with a frown. The landscaping hadn't been closely maintained in probably at least a decade, but the grounds were still lovely, in a wild kind of way. "Why not just knock the place down and make this a park or something?"

"Asbestos. It would probably cost them more to clean it up than it's worth."

"You know that or you're just guessing?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged. "It's a huge house from the right time period. Also, I took a look at some of the paperwork Selman had. It was listed under 'possible areas of concern.'"

"As in 'it's possible there's a problem?'"

"As in, it’s possible they wouldn't be able to find anyone dumb enough to take this off their hands," Sam said dryly.

"Old Joe seems excited about it."

"Yeah, well, he probably got hit in the head a lot when he was younger." Sam ripped his sleeve free from the same bush again and took a few more steps away from it, crowding Dean towards the other one. He could have walked forward and gotten away from the holly all together, but there was just something… foreboding, about the house that made him want to stay clear. He knew Dean could feel his unease, but neither of them commented on it.

"Your enthusiasm for this job is really impressive, Sam."

"At least twenty deaths, Dean," Sam said grimly, arms crossed defensively as he stared down the walkway at the dilapidated mansion. "Something in this house has a serious problem with the living."

Dean looked up at the worn-down ruin that was Joe Selman's dream home. White paint was flaking from the siding and one of the columns had actually fallen down. None of the balconies looked remotely safe, and two of them were missing part of their floors. Half the windows were boarded up, and young trees had taken root in the remains of the long, winding driveway, tearing out concrete as they grew and expanded. Beyond all that, in a place where the living had no power or purchase, Dean could feel a presence that burned like cold fire in the vaults of his mind. Icy and malevolent, it was aware of him too, and wary of what it could feel of his nature.

But not wary enough. 

Dean narrowed speculative eyes as he examined the building. "We'll just have to see how it feels about the dead."

 

** Chapter Seven **

Come here  
Pretty please  
Can you tell me where I am  
You won't you say something  
I need to get my bearings  
I'm lost  
And the shadows keep on changing  
                      ~Haunted, Poe

"Louisa Ann Cartwright," Sam announced finally, almost ten hours later in the local library. He'd insisted on heading straight over after they left the house, and then promptly disappeared into the stacks. He'd barely noticed when Dean finally located him, just shoved a pile of old books in his direction and muttered a last name to look for.

"She's the spook?"

"Possibly. She may have died in the right time frame." Sam turned the huge portfolio so that Dean could easily see it as well. Centered on the page was a very serious picture of a very serious girl. She looked to be about nine or ten.

"'May have died?'"

Sam flipped to another page. "She went missing when she was about seventeen. Her family insisted she had been sent to live with relatives overseas for some kind of nervous complaint, which could mean just about anything for a girl back then, but it kind of looks like the locals thought something else had happened to her."

"Is there police reports or anything?"

"No," Sam sighed and closed the book. "Honestly, I doubt there ever were. I can't find anything but some vague rumors and a few notes in some historical recollections about the Cartwrights at all. Interesting stuff, but not fleshed out at all. I asked the librarian, but she says what they've got is all here. This is the city archive for these old historical texts. The internet has even less than this."

"That's kind of odd, isn't it?" Dean closed the book he'd been flipping through as well. "A big, wealthy family like that loses a kid, the local rumor mill is churning, and no one prints up anything about it at all?"

"They had money, and apparently liked their privacy." Sam shrugged. "You can buy a lot of silence and forgetfulness if you know where to apply the cash."

"Great." Dean glanced at a clock on the wall. "They're going to close in about five minutes. You ready to go?"

Sam waved a hand helplessly over a stack of books almost three feet tall on the chair next to him.

"Why do half of those looks like occult titles?" Dean asked suspiciously.

"I was getting to that. Remember those rumors I told you about?"

"The ones you said weren't recorded anywhere?"

"I said I couldn't find much in the way of details. But we may not need details to put the pieces together. Apparently one of the most popular rumors flying around when Louisa disappeared was that Ellis Cartwright, Louisa's father, made a deal with the devil to make his money. And sacrificed Louisa to pay his debt."

Dean snorted. "That's not how that works at all."

"No," Sam agreed grimly, "but the Cartwrights struck it rich in nineteen seventeen on some long-shot foreign venture. And Ellis Cartwright died of some unspecified injury in nineteen twenty seven. The same year Louisa went missing."

"Ten years." Dean leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his stomach. "That is interesting."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I thought so too."

"Not terribly helpful though; if Cartwright had a deal, then he's definitely not the ghost. And we still don't know any more about this Louisa chick."

"I know, but Rufus calls us in for a hunt and one of the principal players just happens to be a likely victim of a demonic deal? That's quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

"First of all, if he made a deal with a demon, that doesn't make him a victim, that makes him a moron."

Sam cast him an irritated look. "You ever heard any sayings about glass houses, Dean?"

" _Secondly_ ," Dean spoke over him, "if it's relevant at all, it's not a coincidence. We're following _your_ psychic roadmap. Every scenic spot along the way had _better_ be related to our mission, and not just to getting Joe Selman settled into his crappy money pit in domestic bliss."

"I'm just saying, Dean."

  
~~~~~

 

"Did you tell Rufus we're going to take a run at the house tomorrow?" Dean asked later that evening. Sam was eating a slice of pizza and flipping slowly through one of the books Dean had managed to borrow from the library through a skillful combination of innate charm and outright lies.

"Yeah," Sam said, making an effort to hold the pizza away from the book. "He said to try not to break any of the intact windows, and that if we have to bleed on something, to avoid the wood floors if at all possible. Apparently Joe thinks he can just have those refinished. The carpet's fine though, or the tile."

"Rufus's concern for our well-being is really overwhelming." Dean rolled his eyes.

"I think Rufus is mostly concerned with getting Selman away from his current home so he can discreetly shovel everything into a dumpster, have the place knocked down, and claim it was a freak windstorm."

"He should do that for both houses. Maybe the shock will kill Selman and that solves all his problems."

Sam's look was withering.

Dean grabbed the pizza box from the bed Sam was laying on and perched with it on a low dresser that had probably seen better days sometime in the forties. "So, we have a plan for tomorrow or are we just going to wing it?"

"It sounds like a pissed off ghost, and if that's the case then it has to have bones or something around there anchoring it here. But there's not enough information available to say for sure who it is. Which in the case of Louisa might make us really screwed, since she was supposedly sent overseas and doesn't even _have_ a grave. And if we don't know for sure who it is--"

"--Then we don't know whose bones need seasoning, and we're digging up the whole cemetery and still doing jack squat. I get it, Sam. This isn't my first ride at the rodeo. So, you just want to barge in and see if it's in the twenty questions kind of mood before it tries to turn us inside out?"

"You have a better idea?" Sam asked hopefully.

"Nope.

Sam sighed. "Head on it is then, I guess."

  
~~~~~

 

Noon the next day found them standing on the broken walk again, looking up at a house that seemed, if anything, more ominous than the day before.

"We probably should have just done this yesterday," Dean commented casually, kicking at a loose chunk of concrete at his feet.

"Done what?" Sam asked, distracted. He had a sawed off shotgun loaded with rocksalt tucked under one arm and was preoccupied with patting his pockets in search of the lighter he was certain he remembered shoving into one that morning. There was a small bag of loose salt tied to his belt and his jacket was weighted with extra shells for the gun.

"You sure you packed enough?" Dean asked, watching the search. "I mean, we're only going to be here for one week. Two, tops."

"Ha, ha. Not all of us are reality-rending demons from beyond the grave, Dean. We have to work with what we've got, and I've got extra rounds of rock salt because it really sucks when you run out in the middle of a fight and have to resort to trying to club the angry spirits with an empty gun, remember?" Sam scowled in frustration, he was _sure_ he'd brought a lighter…

Dean rolled his eyes and stepped in close enough that their thighs pressed together. Sam could feel the heat of contact even through two layers of denim. Before he could step back from the blatant invasion of his personal space, Dean wrapped an arm around him and slipped a hand into one of Sam's back pockets, fishing out a cheap Zippo they'd picked up at a gas station a few states back. Dean stepped gracefully back in the same movement and held the lighter out.

He answered the question before Sam could ask. "I could see the outline through the fabric while we were walking up here."

"Uh… thanks." Sam blinked and had to force his mind back on task. "What were you saying we should have done yesterday?"

"This." Dean glanced back at the building. "Just stomped in there and finished the job right off, not wasted half the day and all of last night on research that didn't pan out anyways."

"We didn't know it wasn't going to pan out, and I don't know why you're complaining," Sam added impatiently. "I did research, _you_ spent the evening watching some kind of Japanese game show you couldn't even understand."

"Some things transcend language, Sam."

"Yeah, like the dead," Sam said pointedly. He looked reluctantly towards the mansion. "Window or door?"

Dean shrugged and held up the key chain Rufus had supplied them with. "May as well start with what's easy."

"Yeah." Sam drew a deep breath, feeling cold to the bone even with the July heat baking through his jacket. "Let's go then." He started down the walk towards the house, but Dean caught up after a moment and grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop.

"You don't have to do this, Sam."

Sam jerked his arm free. "This is kind of the entire point of being here, Dean."

"No, I mean _you_ don't have to do this. Whatever's in that house is seriously pissed, and seriously powerful."

"You can feel it?"

"Yeah, I can feel it. And you can feel it too," Dean said impatiently. "It's not rolling out the welcome mat for us, and there's no reason for you to tempt fate by barging into this kind of hostile territory. I can do it alone."

Sam glanced at the house, and then back at his brother. "You wouldn't let me go in there alone."

"I'm kind of on the edge of not letting you go in there at all," Dean said pointedly.

Sam's smile was sharp and unfriendly. "That's not your decision."

Dean grabbed his arm again and leaned in close. "You might be surprised at how much my decision it can be," he said in a low, warning tone.

Sam scowled. "Don't threaten me, Dean." Tension was humming in the link between them, tension and… genuine worry. Sam suddenly wondered what exactly it was Dean was picking up from the house. His own body was almost vibrating with nerves, and the cold just seemed to be burrowing deeper into his core.

"What makes you think this place is any worse than half the other haunting that we've dealt with?" Sam asked instead of forcing the other issue. Dean, surprised at the change in direction, slowly released him.

"I'm not sure," Dean said, turning to look at the house again. "It's there, and it's aware of us… maybe just too aware. Spirits that have this much presence usually don't know they're dead. This one is… waiting. Like a big, nasty spider hunched in its web. Ghosts don't anticipate, Sam. They're reactive or cyclical -- but when nothing is tripping their sensors, they should be almost completely inert in this world. Like that children's hospital you almost died in down in Florida," he added. "The place was alive with spiritual activity, but only because it was being stirred up by those teenagers poking around."

"Maybe Rufus and Joe stirred it up when they checked the place out?"

Dean shook his head. "No, I could feel it like this yesterday too. It's fully self-aware, and you just don't get that in human ghosts."

"There's other kinds of ghosts?" Sam asked absently, giving the house another assessing look.

"There's things a lot older and darker in the world than humanity, Sam." Dean said grimly.

"So what then -- you don't think this is human?"

"No, that's what's so weird, it _is_ human," Dean said, baffled. "It's got all the flavor of a human ghost, just-- it's wrong."

"Maybe not a natural haunting, then," Sam suggested after a minute. "The book said the locals thought Cartwright had sacrificed his daughter in some kind of demonic ritual. Maybe whatever he did to her… did this."

"Oh, yeah." Dean turned his attention back to his brother. "This sounds _exactly_ like the kind of thing you should come with me to check out."

Sam checked the shotgun and made sure it was ready. "Actually, Dean, since it was _my_ vision that warned us about the call, and _me_ that Rufus actually called for help -- it's more like this is my hunt, and you're the invited guest. But feel free to wait in the car if you want. I'll let you know what I find." Sam sent his determination twisting through the link and knew from Dean's scowl that he was getting the message loud and clear.

"Fine," Dean said. "But if you wind up in the emergency room again, I reserve the right to stuff you in the trunk the next time one of these fun little side projects crops up. And I'm really not going to care how bitchy you get about it either."

Sam rolled his eyes and pressed on towards the house.

  
~~~~~

 

After the question of who was actually going into the house was settled, the hunt itself was fairly slow, which was entirely to Dean's liking, since he was pretty sure that the spirit wouldn't have a lot of trouble rending Sam into so much confetti, given the desire to do so. But she, and from the eaves of the porch the flavor was definitely female, seemed less interested in Sam's presence than she did in his own. Amidst the shifting fields of lethal energy and barely constrained rage, Dean detected a hint of curiosity, and a thin tendril of what might have been loneliness. Whatever it was made her stay her hand, as they gained entry through the front door and moved cautiously into the mansion.

"This place is huge," Sam muttered as they stood in the foyer at the foot of a grand, curving staircase like something from a movie set. Dean gave a wary look up to a massive, tiered chandelier gleaming dully overhead under layers of grime. He steered Sam to stand somewhere that wasn't directly below it.

"It's a mansion, Sam. What did you expect?"

"I don't know, Dean. Something more like a house, less like a hotel? I think I saw this place on television once. In _The Great Gatsby_ or something."

"It's just another ruin, Sam. You picking up anything?"

"No, just freezing in my own skin. It hasn't thrown anything at us yet, though. That's encouraging."

"She," Dean said absently.

"Really?"

That luminous thread of curiosity brushed against his shields again. "Yeah, definitely."

"Louisa?" Sam asked.

That got the spirit's attention, and not in a good way. The filtered light through the open windows dimmed and the atmosphere thickened until even Dean's skin crawled with pinpricks. He needed her to ignore Sam, and tried to return the curious overture from earlier, but he was shut out by a blast of bitterness and anger. "Maybe we should just find it, and not talk about it," Dean suggested aloud. He underlined his words with a warning blown through their connection, and knew Sam had received the message from the sudden tightness to his face.

Dean could still feel her, a roiling ball of hatred and power churning somewhere in the center of the house. Indecisive, confused by Dean for the moment, but not even remotely safe. The desire to order Sam out of the house surged again, but Sam had made it clear he was going to be ridiculously unreasonable about taking the sane path, and Dean was afraid that the rebounding emotional tumult from a full blown argument about it could be the straw that set Louisa, or whoever she had been, completely off. In very unhealthy ways.

"This way," Dean said shortly. He picked his way through rooms layered with dust so thick that everything took on a ghostly appearance, as if it nothing was quite as tangible as it should be. Sheet-draped furniture littered the rooms, and the only sound in the house at all was Sam breathing at his back. Dean himself had shut those functions down in his own flesh, not wanting the distraction while he kept all his senses open for the first sign their reluctant host had turned homicidal. He just needed enough warning to toss Sam through whatever window was closest. The spirit's territory was pretty clearly defined by the way the walls seemed almost to pulse with her power, so outside should be safe enough. Sam could just take his chances with whatever broken glass and a rough landing did to him; Dean hadn't wanted him to come inside in the first place.

"Are you feeling this?" Dean asked quietly a few minutes later as they passed through a solarium, the room covered in thick plastic and the floor littered with broken glass.

"I told you," Sam answered back in an equally low voice." I just feel cold."

Dean shook his head in disgust. "How can you be this badass psychic, and still be so completely dead to the spirit world?"

"I don't know, Dean, maybe ghosts just aren't my thing," Sam growled. "I've got other stuff on my plate, you know? Demons, apocalypses, angels. You."

The spirit surged again, china from somewhere under the sheets rattling alarmingly as a tremor, felt but unheard, vibrated through the floor. They both froze, then slowly relaxed when it died away

"Maybe if it's not unicorns or candy canes, we should just save it for later," Dean suggested with forced calm.

"Good idea," Sam agreed, looking around warily.

Dean followed his senses through the winding maze of the house, and a short eternity later they ended up in what looked to be some kind of receiving room. At first glance, it wasn't a remarkable room. Not at second glance either. Empty bookshelves lined one of the walls, and a sheet-covered piano took up one of the corners. A few wingback chairs and end tables were littered around the room beneath their own shrouds. Bland landscapes decorated the walls, with one or two areas of discoloration on the garish wallpaper showing where other pictures had probably once hung.

Dean was unhappy that the room was an interior one with no convenient exits, but it seemed to exist in the eye of the storm churning through the walls. Whatever there was to find, it was here. Only there didn't seem to be a lot of 'here' to the room. They checked under the sheets to find nothing but bare table tops and clean leather. At a loss, Dean even dug into the piano, but it quickly proved just as uninteresting as everything else. The ghost was growing restless. Dean let her taste a hint of his nature and she recoiled, but he could feel her hesitancy wearing thin.

Behind him, Sam was using his flashlight to inspect the empty shelves in minute detail.

Dean watched for a moment, frustrated with his own search. "What are you looking for?" he finally asked.

"A door, or a latch, maybe," Sam answered, preoccupied with his work. "You said this is the place, so there has to be _something_ here. If we have to check this whole house room by room, we may as well give up now and wish Selman good luck."

A hidden door. That was a good idea idea. Dean left Sam to the bookshelves and reexamined the pictures on the walls. Nothing about them spoke to him, so instead Dean paced the perimeter, trailing one hand along the walls and listening with things other than his ears. After a second pass, a grim smile curved the corners of his mouth. Without warning he picked up a chair and hurled it through the far wall.

"Jesus, Dean!" Sam yelled after the initial explosion died down. He coughed in the cloud of dust and debris, and Dean felt a brief tinge of concern as a word surfaced in his mind, _asbestos_ , but then dismissed it. He doubted cancer would be more proof against the power that flowed between he and Sam than anything else had been. Sam had certainly been exposed to more toxic things in his life.

Where the chair had gone through the wall, tattered wallpaper and splintered wood framed a gaping hole. Cold air moaned out of it. Dean had the distinct feeling that their time had just about run out. He kicked out enough of the area around the gap to create an opening big enough for them to get through, then ducked inside, Sam following barely a heartbeat later. The dust from the chair's impact was still thick in the air, and while the narrow beams of their flashlight couldn’t take in the whole picture, they took in enough.

The room was small and the ceiling low compared to the others they had walked through. The walls looked to be masonry bricks and the floor was bare concrete. Through the gloom and dust, they could make out long tables along the walls. There seemed to be little on them, but it didn't matter because the real showpiece was in the center of the floor.

Sam sighed as his beam settled on the naked skeleton, still covered here and there by dried bits of mummified flesh and stretched out between rings driven into the cement of the floor. Leather straps still held the skeleton's wrists and ankles bound in place, and a long, vicious looking knife had been discarded carelessly to one side. Dark, flaky-looking blood covered the ground beneath the bones and ran all the way to the walls in some places. Dean scuffed at the edge of the dried mess and crouched down to get a better look.

"What is it?" Sam asked tightly.

"Sigils," Dean answered grimly. "The spell burned most of them out and the blood choked what was left, so I couldn't feel them until they were practically under my feet."

"Demonic?"

"Yeah, I think the locals were right. Ellis Cartwright was one twisted son of a bitch. Explains how the ghost got all the extra oomph."

Dean stood up just as the slowly sifting dust swirled in front of them and a figure coalesced for a moment. One heartbeat, two, she hung in the air, familiar with her sharp nose and shallow chin, but her eyes were only empty holes in the mask of her face. The ribbons in her long hair fluttered for a moment, as if caught in a sudden wind, the world hovering on the edge of her contemplation. Then it was only dust again, and the air was suddenly too thick to breathe.

Dean grabbed Sam by the shoulder, spun him towards the opening in the wall and shoved.

"Out," he barked, tasting Sam's panic as well as his own, but it was too late. A tidal wave of winter rage flared to life in the room around them. Dean kept his footing in the initial blast, but Sam was hurled off his feet and into a table on the other side of the room with a bone crunching thud. A stack of books fell on top of his limp body. His presence in Dean's mind flickered for a moment and then died. Dean swore and lashed out, but the ghost matched his rage with her own and barely recoiled.

It was easier, Dean decided grimly as he forced his way through the radiating waves of her power, to fight other demons. They at least usually had a body he could sink his hands into. Even when the fight ranged beyond the strictly physical, he could meet them on even ground. Ghosts vibrated on a different plane, and every time he thought he had a grip on her, she managed to slither free.

She had the same problem though -- only his physical body was vulnerable to her influence, so Dean let it go, slipping free of his skin and into the sudden stillness of another state of existence. Louisa, and Dean had no doubt now of who she had been, was nonplussed at the sudden lack of resistance, and some of the unnatural pressure died away in her confusion.

In the corner of his mind that was always tracking Sam, Dean felt him stir back to consciousness and was flooded with relief. He felt Sam's pain and knew when he caught sight of Dean's lifeless body limp against the far wall. Dean sent reassurance flavored heavily with his annoyance at the entire situation. Now to keep the ghost occupied while Sam finished the job. He wasn't going to win a slugfest with her without more time and risk than he was willing to invest. It was time to tackle the problem from a different angle.

She wasn't clever. She was angry, and powerful, and righteously pissed, but not clever. Easily confused by changes in her environment, Dean needed to keep her focus firmly on himself. Pushing her only made her push back, harder and meaner -- but didn't really _engage_ her. Violence wasn't going to get them what they wanted, but there were other things.

Shock and… something, rippled down the tangling thread that bound him to Sam. Dean couldn't afford to split his attention and could only hope that whatever Sam was distracted by wouldn't stop him from doing what they had come to do. Dean went back to contemplating the immediate problem, wondered if it could really be as easy as just offering her something else to distract her senses with. He gave the mental equivalent of a shrug and decided to try.

The worst that could happen is he'd make her angrier and she'd smear Sam into a grease spot on the wall.

But she didn't.

Dean offered her his memory of the beach he and Sam had eaten breakfast beside that morning, the deep blue of the crashing waves under a lightening sky that was worlds away from the dark, dusty rooms of the house she had died in. She hesitated, and he added sound to sweeten the pot. The lonely cry of seagulls riding the ocean breeze, and the echoing boom of the surf. He tried to keep back anything that would be outside the experience of her time, offering her a window to a world she had been shut away from for almost a century. He wasn't sure what Louisa would make of the intruding honk of rush hour traffic, the power lines and billboards that littered the view, or Sam's surliness when Dean insisted on feeding the birds that hovered close enough to make threatening dives on their food.

Dean was aware of when Sam fished the small bottle of gasoline from the pocket of his own abandoned shell. He knew when the heavy reek of the accelerant filled the cramped room as Sam doused the skeleton and everything else in the circle of blood with the contents.

But Louisa didn't.

When Sam emptied the bag of salt over her bones, she had left the beach and was wandering along the loose stones and scrub at the rim of the Grand Canyon, staring in wonder at the vastness of a miracle of nature she had never seen in life. Dean added in some mule deer and the shadows of racing clouds, then backed carefully away, off the etheric plane, and slipped into his body.

When Dean opened his eyes Sam was hugging a dusty book to his chest and looked like he'd been beaten to within an inch of his life. His face was expressionless, but there was an air of excitement to him that seemed at odds with the situation at hand. Dean really didn't think it was the time to be collecting souvenirs, but wasn't about to start an argument with the delicate balance between grease spot, and not grease spot still hovering in the balance. He motioned Sam back out through the hole in the wall and followed, taking care not to let even the broken drywall crunch under his feet.

Sam handed the cheap lighter to Dean in passing and retreated to the doorway of the sitting room. Dean wished Sam would retreat outside to the damn lawn, but figured if he was going to hold out for a miracle it should probably be something that had a chance in hell of happening. He clicked the lighter and tossed it into the room. The gasoline fumes caught instantly and the tiny, sad room exploded into smoldering ruin.

At some point, while they traced their way back to the nearest ground floor window and an exit that couldn't be hasty enough, the Cartwright's missing daughter vanished from the world again, this time never to return.

 

** Chapter Eight **

I feel something so right  
By doing the wrong thing  
And I feel something so wrong  
By doing the right thing  
I couldn't lie, couldn't lie, couldn't lie  
Everything that kills me makes me feel alive  
                          ~Counting Stars, One Republic

"Okay," Dean said when they were safely outside and making their way back to the car. "What is that?"

The bright, afternoon sun wasn't doing anything to make Sam's injuries look any better, but the worst of the real damage seemed to be a few cracked ribs and a sprained ankle. He didn't think he was bleeding internally, but that could be a fun surprise for later if he was. Dean himself had suffered worse in Louisa's second attack, but spinal fractures and a broken femur had barely slowed him down. He was also limping, but only because he was actively remodeling a bone he was currently walking on.

Sam felt a helpless smile spread over his face despite the pain of roundly getting their asses kicked. "I found it."

"It?"

"The clue, what we were here to find. It fell in my lap, or maybe on my head. It was a little confusing."

"You okay now?" Dean asked with a sidelong look.

"Yeah, it was one of the books from the table. It's a scrapbook. I think. I didn't exactly get a lot of time to look at it, what with the almost no visibility and the angry ghost trying to kill us."

"Yeah, that wasn't a good time for literary pursuits," Dean agreed. "Are you sure?"

"I knew the second I saw it. This is it," Sam said firmly.

"Well… okay then. Good. I'm glad it didn't go up in flames with everything else."

They stopped walking for a minute and looked back at the mansion, where a thin trail of smoke was just starting to rise from the back of the building.

"Do you think it will burn down?" Sam asked, feeling a tinge of regret for Joe Selman's dream home.

"No," Dean snorted. "That room was mostly brick work, and there wasn't that much in it to burn. I mean, he _could_ get lucky and the place might raze itself to the foundations, but most likely he's just going to have an excuse for a whole hell of a lot of redecorating, and Rufus is going to be shoveling crap out of a house the size of a city block within a year. I bet he'll miss the double-wide then."

"His choice," Sam shrugged.

"Yeah. Idiot." He glanced over at Sam, who appeared to be having serious thoughts about trying to hop the rest of the way to the car, then moved in and wedged one shoulder under Sam's arm on his bad side. "You could _ask_ for help," Dean said acidly.

"You're limping too."

"I'm fine. Just don't drop the book."

  
~~~~~

 

"All right," Dean said firmly, when they'd secured a motel room. Sam had immediately shrugged off his jacket and settled himself gingerly on the bed, the pain from his ribs and his foot quickly becoming more than he could ignore. Dean stuffed a pillow under Sam's bad ankle and managed to pry his boot off, ignoring Sam's swearing, and declared the ankle "probably not broken." He got Sam some water and tossed him a bottle of aspirin before settling cross-legged onto the bed beside him. "Spill."

Sam was flipping slowly through the book, looking for what had grabbed his attention in the house. "It looks like a collection of newspaper articles and photographs."

"About what?"

Sam paused on one particularly lurid image. It took his eyes a moment to make out a human form in the disconnected shapes and dark swaths of blood. "Murders. Disappearances. Fires. Accidents."

Dean scooted over until he could see the pages too. "So just your every day creepy scrapbook of pain and misery?"

"Yeah. Some of these are clipped from papers, but some of these pictures are actual prints. You think Cartwright took them?"

"Maybe," Dean shrugged. "I don't think it matters. You see a pattern to any of this?"

Sam skimmed a few more pages. "No. it's just all…." His voice trailed off and he let the pages fall flat on his lap. "This is it. This is what I saw in my vision. This page, exactly like this. We have to find this, Dean," he said intently. "We have to go there."

Dean looked down and they both examined the page in silence. The nineteen twenties photograph centered on it was black and white, and seemed to be taken from outside a small, windowless room. The pale plaster of the walls had been mostly burned grey and black by the fire that had reduced everything else in the room to charcoal ruin. It wasn't the starkness of the architecture that caught the eye though -- the photograph was focused on the remains of an elaborate painting that could still be seen, despite the smoky damage that had destroyed most of the work and the wall it was on.

"Does this look like an angel to you, Sam?" Dean finally asked, pointing to one of the mostly ruined figures still discernible at the edge.

"Yeah," Sam said grimly.

"You sure this is important?"

"We have to go here, Dean," Sam repeated.

"Okay," Dean said agreeably. "Where is it?"

Sam frowned and skimmed the articles on the opposite page, but none of them referenced a fire and all came from different states. At a loss, he carefully pried at the edges of the photograph until it came free of the page. Sam turned it over, relieved to see spidery writing at the bottom corner. Then he made out the words and let his head fall back against the wall with a groan.

"St. Mary's Asylum, Ilchester. Nineteen twenty-five," Dean read aloud beside him. "You don't by any chance think that this place might happen to be on the same grounds as St. Mary's Convent, do you?"

It was barely a question, and Sam's stony silence was answer enough.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. He flipped the book closed on Sam's lap and moved the entire thing over to a bedside table. "I don't know why we're even surprised by this crap anymore."

Sam exhaled heavily. "At least Lilith won't be there this time."

"We hope," Dean corrected. "Didn't your special friend say she could spring herself at any moment?"

"No, he said she _might_ be able to break herself out a little early. Not this early."

"That's not what it sounded like when you told me about it the first time."

"It doesn't matter," Sam said firmly. "The Cage doesn't open there anymore. It's just like any other place in the world now. We just need to drive up there and… see what the deal is with this place." Sam paused for a minute, looking like he was struggling to find the right words for something before finally settling on, "It's real now."

Dean had swung his feet off the bed and begun toeing off his own boots. He glanced up when Sam spoke. "What is?"

"This, everything. I don't know. Some random whatever isn't sending us back to freaking _Ilchester_ , Dean. It's _real_ now. This isn't an accident. We're on the path. We have finally fucking found it." There was a ferocity to Sam's elation that Dean heartily shared, and he was only a little surprised when Sam reached out to grab a handful of his t-shirt and dragged him in for a kiss. Sam was breathless when he let him go a minute later. The elation had burned into something else, something Dean didn't feel that often from Sam's direction and he watched, bemused, as Sam set to working himself free of his clothes with single-minded dedication.  

"You're not going to be able to get that over your head with cracked ribs," Dean observed out as Sam rolled his shirt up, only to pause halfway with a grimace of pain.

"I'll manage," Sam said shortly.

Dean knelt on the bed beside him, within easy reach. "I could help."

"You're still dressed." Sam managed to get an arm inside the shirt and shrugged it up on one shoulder. He shot Dean a triumphant look. Dean obediently started peeling off his clothes.

"You want to call Rufus first and let him know we may have accidentally on purpose kind of burned down Selman's new house?"

"Later."

"You only want this now because cracked ribs hurt, your ankle's the size of a grapefruit, and you don't want to suffer through it for the next three or so weeks," Dean observed.

Sam paused halfway through unbuttoning his jeans and looked up, startled. "Do you care?"

"Nope." Dean grinned. "You think there was even the smallest chance in Hell that you were going back to _Ilchester_ of all cursed places, when you can't even run? I'm just glad it was your idea for once. I don't mind pinning you down for your own damn good, but a little variety is good for a relationship, you know?"

"You talk too much," Sam muttered. He paused in his undressing, unsure of how to get his jeans down off his ankle without more pain than he was really in the mood for. Dean rolled his eyes and solved the problem by just grabbing the bottom cuffs and dragging them off that way. It still hurt, but the pain wasn't as distracting as the promise of its relief was.

Dean rechecked the lock on the door and made sure there was a gun on the nightstand. "You want me to pull down the comforter?" he asked Sam, who hadn't bothered pulling down the sheets before he'd climbed onto the bed earlier, and certainly hadn't bothered afterwards. "It's going to be a mess if we don't."

"I don't care," Sam said. "Come here."

So Dean did.

  
~~~~~

 

"What time is it?" Sam mumbled against his shoulder some time later. They had ended up under the sheets after all, but only afterward, when the temperature in the room was raising goosebumps on Sam's cooling skin. His ankle was still swollen, but Dean had confidence it would be healed by dawn. Already Sam's breathing had lost the pained hitch of cracked ribs, and Dean was pretty sure that within a few hours they would just be another bad memory.

They had so many bad memories.

"Around eight," Dean answered. "You hungry?"

"Starving." Sam peeled himself away with a grimace and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"You going to call Rufus now?"

Sam picked his phone up off the nightstand and blinked at the list of missed calls. "Did you hear this ringing?"

"Nope," Dean said easily. "I turned it off when I checked the room earlier. I figured someone might want to be tedious and interrupt, and we had other plans."

Sam tried to shoot him a glare, but the annoyance was tempered by post-coital lassitude and the best he could manage was a disgruntled frown. After a moment, he decided he wasn't really in the mood to discuss arson with Rufus yet anyways, and tossed the phone back down on the nightstand.

Dean dropped a handful of takeout menus he'd scavenged from an informational display on the dresser onto the bed by Sam's knee. "Pick something for dinner. Then, if you can stand up, take a shower. Food should be here by the time you get out. We need to eat something and get some rest."

"Tomorrow's a big day," Sam said distantly, and Dean knew that a weight of portents and trembling vibrancy hovered on the edge of his mind. The instant before falling, a last glimpse of sun before night.

"Yeah, Sam," Dean agreed with a dark, anticipatory smile. "Tomorrow's going to be a big day."

 

**END**

 

**Other Stories in this 'Verse**

**A03:[F](http://archiveofourown.org/works/418832/chapters/696771) **[ortress](http://archiveofourown.org/works/418832/chapters/696771), [Skin and Bones](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2100609), [Static](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2099679/chapters/4576209), [The Things You Keep](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2100846), Requiem****

**Livejournal:[Fortress](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/10886.html), [Skin and Bones](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/21364.html), [Static](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/25664.html), [The Things You Keep](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/43883.html), [Requiem](http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/45283.html)**

 

 [ **Requiem Art Masterpost**](http://ameraleigh.livejournal.com/17803.html)

 

**All Feedback Is Appreciated!**

 

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